Some say you’re supposed to try to jazz up your issues to interest the Court. Whatever the value of that advice, it’s not always true.

Yesterday, the Court requested briefing on the merits in In re Bendtsen, No. 07-0822, a wills-and-estates case out of the Dallas Court. [docket] ((At the same time, the Court also denied the petitioner’s motion for emergency stay.)) To my knowledge, this is the only briefing request to come out after this week’s conference.

The opinion of the Dallas Court is here.

The court of appeals extensively discussed a variety of waiver grounds. Along the way, it concluded that some of the filings made below fell outside the trial court’s plenary jurisdiction. And it concluded that still other arguments were waived by statements counsel made in the summary-judgment hearing and the appellate argument.

I haven’t seen the petition itself, so I don’t know which of those issues has been urged to the Court. But whichever were chosen, they seem to suit the Court’s recent attention to cases about the nuances of plenary jurisdiction and error preservation. And that’s enough to at least make it to the briefing-on-the-merits stage.