All three of these were chosen for argument with last week’s orders (blog post):

• The Court chose an argument date for In re Stephanie Lee, No. 11-0732: February 28, 2012.

• It granted a motion to “reset” the argument in Combs v. Roark Amusement and Vending, L.P., No. 11-0261 (the case about arcade claw machines). It had been scheduled for February 28, 2012. No new date has been assigned.

• And — for the second in the past two months — it denied a party’s request to reschedule oral argument. Without comment, the orders list notes that a request was filed in In re the Office of the Attorney General, No. 11-0255. It remains set for oral argument on February 27, 2012. (A similar request was denied on December 22, 2011 in Ashford Partners, Ltd. v. Eco Resources, Inc., No. 10-0615. On that orders list, Justice Guzman noted her dissent to the denial of the motion.)

In at least one regard, U.S. Supreme Court advocates have it easy. They know about the grant of review before the merits briefs are even filed, so they can block out preparation time — many go to the elaborate ends of participating in outside moot courts.

In the Texas Supreme Court, by contrast, there can be just a few weeks between the grant of review and the oral argument date. The lawyers in the four cases mentioned above were originally given about four weeks notice of the argument date.

With two of these motions being denied in recent months, I’m curious to know what reasons for rescheduling the Court is finding persuasive — and unpersuasive.

John Ganim v. J. Farouk (Frank) Alattar, No. 10-0592.

Two business partners discussed entering a real-estate transaction together to buy some property, and one of them signed for it as “Trustee” (of an unidentified trust). The two later had a falling out, disagreeing about whether the land was bought for them collectively or just by one of them.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court held that the statute of frauds did not bar enforcement of the parties’ oral agreement about this real estate purchase (opinion).

Rehearing was sought, and an amicus brief was submitted by former Justice Brister on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth — which had its direct appeal about the ownership of church property accepted by the Court two weeks ago.

The amicus brief suggests that the diocese is concerned about how a broad reading of Ganim v. Alattar might affect its pending direct appeal:

… the opinion’s suggestion that a claimant to property can plead around the statute of frauds and the Texas Trust Code by asserting nothing but an oral agreement for joint acquisition of land. Can a third party — who has no title, no signed writing, and no money at risk — become owner of real estate simply by convincing a jury that an oral promise of joint ownership was made many years ago? If that is Texas law, then claimants from Rome, Canterbury, or anywhere else might ask a jury to award interests in Texas church properties based on nothing but oral testimony about “understandings” from long ago.

The Court’s grant of rehearing in Ganim gives it a little more time to sort through the broader implications.

The amicus strategy here is also instructive. Although many groups have some interest in how this rule applies to partnerships or trusts, this amicus brief had the secondary (or perhaps primary?) goal of highlighting the importance of the diocese’s pending direct appeal. Nicely done.

When the Texas Supreme Court takes up a direct appeal, it uses the language that it “notes probable jurisdiction” — a phrase that parallels U.S. Supreme Court practice for its direct appeals. The Court only has limited power to take these cases, and when a litigant seeks a direct appeal, they file a “jurisdictional statement” urging the Court to accept jurisdiction. Once it has done so, the Court then requests merits briefs and can set the case for oral argument.

Generally, only injunctive relief against a state statute can support a direct appeal

What type of cases can support this narrow type of jurisdiction?

Looking for guidance, a litigant might turn to Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 57 (“Direct Appeals to the Supreme Court”). The rule explains some of the procedure for handling “direct appeals … that are authorized by the Constitution and by statute.” Tex. R. App. P. 57.1. Discerning which appeals are “authorized” is left to the reader.

The Court’s appellate jurisdiction over a direct appeal flows ultimately from the Texas Constitution, which sets the outer boundaries for the Legislature and Court to work within:

Sec. 3-b. APPEAL FROM ORDER GRANTING OR DENYING INJUNCTION. The Legislature shall have the power to provide by law, for an appeal direct to the Supreme Court of this State from an order of any trial court granting or denying an interlocutory or permanent injunction on the grounds of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of any statute of this State, or on the validity or invalidity of any administrative order issued by any state agency under any statute of this State.

Tex. Const. art. V, §3-b. That focus is quite narrow — just the handful of situations when an injunction turns on the constitutionality of a state statute or administrative order.

The Legislature, in turn, has further narrowed the boundaries. The statute describing the Texas Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction speaks only about cases in which a statute’s constitutionality is questioned — not mere administrative orders. See Tex. Gov’t Code §22.001(c) (“An appeal may be taken directly to the supreme court from an order of a trial court granting or denying an interlocutory or permanent injunction on the ground of the constitutionality of a statute of this state.”)

Although administrative orders are omitted from this general grant of authority, the Legislature has sometimes made specific grants of power to hear direct appeals, such as during electric deregulation in the late 1990s.

Direct appeals are therefore very rare

While I was at OSG, I came across two situations in which the Texas Supreme Court heard a direct appeal — the state-level challenges to the 2001 redistricting process, and the 2004-2005 round of school-finance litigation.

To double check, I recently cranked up the docket database behind DocketDB and filtered it down to just direct appeals filed since 2000.

In those 10 years, I found just two other examples:

• In 2000, a set of electric-deregulation appeals came before the Court under a statute specifying that direct appeals could be taken for that class of orders.

• In 2002, the Court heard a direct appeal in an election challenge to the eligibility of a judge to be on the ballot for one party after running in the other party’s primary.

That’s it.

I did find one other time when the Court at least took the step of requesting briefing by the parties. But in that case, as in every other direct appeal in the past decade, the Court ultimately declined to hear the case.

When can private litigants file a direct appeal?

Notably, all of these successful direct appeals — before today, at least — involved the state on one side or the other. Each directly involved the legality of some state action.

The direct appeal in Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth represents the unusual case where a dispute between two private litigants raises the right kind of constitutional question about a state law. The Court’s decision to accept jurisdiction may also have been motivated by the other pending cases in the state raising similar questions. By taking this direct appeal, the Court may hope to remove some broader uncertainty in Texas law.

So I would think twice (or more) about raising a direct appeal. Remember that the intermediate court of appeals can grant the same relief as the Texas Supreme Court, and (because of a quirk familiar to Texas appellate lawyers) those courts actually have more power to reverse when facts are disputed. If your concern is truly the speed of the answer, then having a direct appeal dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court doesn’t advance that goal.

We know how many signed opinions each Justice wrote as soon as they’re published. But the per curiam opinions are a mystery. It’s not until the Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA) releases its year-end report that we get a count of how many were credited to each Justice.

Now that OCA has released its report, I’ve updated my chart of opinion authors, which shows:

• Justice Hecht led the way with 27 deciding opinions — 15 signed and 12 per curiams.

• Justice Johnson (19 deciding opinions) and Justice Wainwright (16 deciding opinions) also exceeded the Court’s average of slightly more than 12 per Justice. (Justice Medina and Chief Justice Jefferson were very close to that mark.)

• The most frequent author of concurring opinions was Justice Willett with 7, almost half the Court’s output of 16 concurrences. Chief Justice Jefferson was a strong second with 4 concurrences.

• The most frequent author of dissenting opinions was Justice Johnson with 6, closely followed by Justice Lehrmann with 5. Justice Wainwright also had 5, if you fold in opinions that were both “concurring and dissenting.” Every Justice authored at least one true dissenting opinion.

• No Justice wrote more per curiams than signed majority opinions. Only Justice Hecht authored more per curiams than separate (concurring or dissenting) opinions. The focus was very much on clearing out the signed opinions from the Court’s docket.

These OCA statistics focus on opinion authorship — the traditional (albeit imperfect) measure of output for appellate judges.

We might soon have some new measures, thanks to recent legislative demands for details about how individual Justices have been meeting the Court’s internal deadlines. And as it turns out, those reports are due on December 1st of each year.¹

1. You can find the language on page 3 of this very large PDF, part of the appropriations bill in 2009.

As of Monday morning, there were just two signed decisions this Term. With the opinions released Monday afternoon for Allcat, there are now three — and the Term’s first separate opinion. Along the way, there have also been five per curiam decisions. (The click-through table is on DocketDB.)

A slow start was to be expected, given the small number of cases carried forward this Term. ¹

But the conventional wisdom is that the Court always has a slow start in the fall (the first quarter), as it absorbs new law clerks. Similarly, the conventional wisdom suggests that the summer (the fourth quarter) is the busiest for opinions, as the Court tries to clear the decks before the end of the fiscal year.

Do the numbers bear this out?

I took a look at the last five years of opinions, distinguishing between signed opinions and per curiam opinions. I figured out what percentage of each year’s opinions fell into each fiscal “quarter” — 1Q (September to November), 2Q (December to February), 3Q (March to May), and 4Q (June to August). The table below represents the average of those years.²

As expected, the signed opinions increase as you progress through the quarters: roughly 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. By contrast, the per curiams show a slight dip in the first quarter and then are split almost evenly among the remaining three quarters.

Why the difference here?

The per curiams show a dip in the first quarter and then are fairly steady for the rest of the Term. That seems to bear out the idea that it takes a little time to get new law clerks up to speed.

Why do signed opinions show a much more pronounced pattern? One answer might be that signed opinions tend to follow argued cases and are thus dependent on the Court’s highly seasonal argument scheduling. (In recent years, arguments have been scheduled from September through March or April.)

Less obviously, the two types of decisions have different effects on the Court’s statistics if carried forward from one Term to the next. Signed opinions tend to show up as “causes” and thus are highlighted when they linger. By contrast, per curiam opinions usually result from petitions granted only at the moment the opinion issue issued — and that, before that time, were just part of the general petition pool. With those incentives, it is not too surprising if the Court prioritizes signed opinions as the summer winds to a close.

1. Only one of those has been decided: Sharyland Water Supply Corporation v. City of Alton, et al., No. 09-0223.
2. Yes, it’s just five years. Appellate geeks — like sports nuts — often trade in sample sizes far too small to be “significant.”

This blog post shares a tip for how to cite Wikipedia, when you’ve already decided that you want to refer to the largest single compendium of human knowledge ever assembled.

Accuracy vs. Authority

Robert pointed out that Wikipedia tends to be very accurate, at least for topics that get a relatively high volume of community involvement. Studies show that it can be more accurate that a carefully peer-edited encyclopedia. On the other hand, the prose tends to be choppy and difficult to read in large doses — it’s a patchwork of styles from different contributors. So you probably don’t want to read the history of a major event (like World War II) on Wikipedia, even if there are a huge number of (accurate) facts.

When you think about writing a formal citation to Wikipedia, you confront the difference between authority and accuracy. It’s certainly not authoritative based on the identity of any particular author — you do not know who wrote an article, nor do you know who has contributed edits (or approved of the text and left well enough alone). But the fact that so many people have an editing pen creates a kind of distributed peer review. As Clay Shirky put it: “[Wikipedia] took one of the best ideas of the last 500 years — peer review — and expanded its field of operation so dramatically that it changed the way authority is configured.”

For a profession in the authority business — in how we cite cases, in how we pitch our own skills, in how we deal with expert witnesses — this disconnect can be hard to accept. But a crowdsourced reference can be extremely valuable as a place to start deeper research or for information more generally known.

When You Do Cite Wikipedia, How Should You Do It?

Let’s say you want to cite Wikipedia for a fact about the world. How do courts do it? Is there a better way?

The Beaumont Court of Appeals cited Wikipedia in a 2009 decision, In re K.E.L., No. 09-08-00014-CV (Tex. App. — Beaumont Feb. 26, 2009). Here’s footnote 3:

“MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, MySpace, at http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).

The Court chose this URL:

http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace

As has become standard for internet citations, it used the parenthetical “last visited Feb. 3, 2009.” Is that really helpful? For most websites, can you do anything at all with a “last visited” date?

If you follow the court’s link, you get the most current version of the article. On the current version as it appears today, the sentence quoted by the Texas court of appeals now reads: “Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake.” That’s an entirely different emphasis than it had in 2009. Indeed, there’s now a prominent section titled “Decline: 2008 – present,” explaining how it lost the social-networking wars to Facebook. In a few more years, the continually edited entry may look more like the GeoCities entry today. (“Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.”)

It’s Not Impermanence. It’s Version Control.

That brings up a criticism you hear about Wikipedia: You shouldn’t cite it because it changes all the time, and you don’t know what your reader will see.

But with Wikipedia, as many of you know, there is a revision history. You can browse an article’s edits with its “View History” tab, right next to the search box in the top right.

This shows you a list of each edit, complete with the user name (or IP address) of the person who submitted each edit.

If you look back about 630 edits into the list, there’s a version from 5:49 AM on February 3, 2009. Some edits fall in the middle of the day, and other times the article is edited several times in one day. But we got lucky with this one. The “last visited” date might actually point us to the right place.

You Can Cite To a Permalink to Today’s Version

If you followed the links that I embedded above, you did see precisely the pages I wanted you to see — the older version from a specific moment in 2009, and the snapshot that appears right now as I’m writing this post. You can check back next week or next year, and you should see the same text.

Wikipedia uses the term “permalink” to describe this type of URL. The permalink to the current version (the one you’re citing) is listed in the left-hand column under the Toolbox menu. Click the word “Permalink” in that list, and the page reloads as itself to what your reader will see. You can then grab the URL and paste it into a brief.

You’ll notice a pink status bar when you load a page by its permalink. It tells you whether or not you are viewing the most current version. It also gives you the option to generate a diff between the link you followed and the current version — a very quick way for a reader to confirm whether the facts have changed in the intervening time. If you click on this “diff”:

You get this:

As lawyers, we should be drooling with envy. We all know what needs this type of easy-to-link version control that lets the reader easily determine what has changed over time: statutes.

Legal citations for amended statutes devolve into the kind of soup seen in footnote 2 of this same opinion: “Although the Legislature amended certain aspects of the statute that provides the terms for standard possession orders after the possession order at issue here, the changes are not pertinent to this appeal. Therefore, we cite the current version. Compare Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 153.312 (Vernon 2008) with Act of May 27, 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., ch. 1041, § 2, sec. 153.312(a), 2007 Tex. Gen. Laws 3594, 3595 (current version at Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 153.312(a) (Vernon 2008)), and Act of May 29, 2005, 79th Leg., R.S., ch. 916, § 12, sec. 153.312(b), 2005 Tex. Gen. Laws 3148, 3151-52 (current version at Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 153.312(b) (Vernon 2008)).)”

Permalinks are Better Than “Last Visited.”

This is what the permalink URL looks like for the February 3, 2009 version of the MySpace wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Myspace&oldid=268197951.

When you are citing Wikipedia, you should be using a permalink URL that looks like that.

Last year, I was critical of the new Bluebook for how it treats URLs as if they were the names of volumes of books rather than pinpoints to specific pages. The emphasis seems to be on what the researcher did (i.e., “last visited” or “downloaded from”) rather than how the next researcher can quickly get to the right resource. As I wrote:

URLs are ugly in print, but they are “uniform resource locators.” They are built to do this job with precision. And an ugly citation that works is far superior to a pretty one that doesn’t.

When a site like Wikipedia gives you the gift of precise, persistent URLs, you owe it to your readers to take advantage of them.¹

1. As a practical matter, you should also take a screenshot or make a good printout for your own records. On the Mac, I’m a fan of the program LittleSnapper, which lets you take an image of an entire webpage, including below the fold [1MB file]. The software is marketed to web designers, but it’s handy for archivists, too.

The Texas Supreme Court has now amended the trial and appellate rules of procedure (PDF) to conform to that statute.

The new rules provide that:

• When the trial court thinks an order appropriate for this kind of early interlocutory review, it should say so in the order itself (or an amendment of that order). Tex. R. Civ. P. 168.

• The parties then have 15 days to file a petition with the court of appeals, including some basic elements of a brief (required tables and a statement of facts), as well as an argument focused on the statutory requirements: “why the order to be appealed involves a controlling question of law as to which there is a substantial ground for difference of opinion and how an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.” Tex. R. App. P. 28.2(e). The petition can be no more than 15 pages. Tex. R. App. P. 28.2(g).

• The court of appeals can grant the parties an extension of time to file this petition. Tex. R. App. P. 28.2(d).

• A response would be due within 10 days, with any further reply within 7 days. Tex. R. App. P. 28.2(f).

• The court of appeals will generally decide whether to take the petition without oral argument and “no earlier than 10 days after the petition is filed” (giving the appellee a chance to respond). Tex. R. App. P. 28.2(j).

Is this like Texas Supreme Court petition practice?

The commentary published with the order says, “The petition procedure in Rule 28.2 is intended to be similar to the Rule 53 procedure governing petitions for review in the Supreme Court.” That is true as a matter of form, with the page limits and quick deadlines.

But the differences are also significant. While the Texas Supreme Court has broad discretion over which substantive issues it wants to hear at all, this rule is focused on timing — should the certified order be addressed now on permissive appeal, or should it wait for a later merits appeal? The question is not importance to the jurisprudence, but optimizing the efficiency of a single suit.

A more subtle difference is that, in the Texas Supreme Court, it is common for a respondent to simply waive filing a response until one is requested by the Court. These rules do not provide for that “waive and wait” process. If an appellee wants to oppose, they have ten days to file a response.

The more obvious comparison is with federal permissive interlocutory appeals under 28 U.S.C. 1292(b). Federal appellate courts do not always agree to take up these appeals, even after an order is certified by the trial court. It will be interesting to see which types of orders Texas trial courts agree to certify — and which the courts of appeals choose to decline.

1. The new language of Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code §51.014:

   (d) On a party’s motion or on its own initiative, a trial court in a civil action may, by written order, permit an appeal from an order that is not otherwise appealable if:

   (1) the order to be appealed involves a controlling question of law as to which there is a substantial ground for difference of opinion; and

   (2) an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation .

   …

   (f) An appellate court may accept an appeal permitted by Subsection (d) if the appealing party, not later than the 15th day after the date the trial court signs the order to be appealed, files in the court of appeals having appellate jurisdiction over the action an application for interlocutory appeal explaining why an appeal is warranted under Subsection (d). If the court of appeals accepts the appeal, the appeal is governed by the procedures in the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure for pursuing an accelerated appeal. The date the court of appeals enters the order accepting the appeal starts the time applicable to filing the notice of appeal.

Like its previous e-brief orders, this one makes some fine-tuning adjustments to the process. The required paper copies are now due “within three business days after” e-filing, not the next business day. And the number of copies needed now varies by type of filing:

Advocates should note: The Court wants more paper copies of merits briefs than petitions. This difference, I am told, reflects the Justices’ preferences about when they would want a paper copy. More wanted access to a paper copy of merits briefs than petitions.

There are two other changes that affect paper copies.

First, the Court now specifies that the paper copy must be the file-stamped PDF returned to you by the e-filing system. The Court wants to ensure that the paper version matches the final e-filed version. (This also makes pretty clear that the e-filed version is the official one.)

Second, the Court now specifies which appendix items should be included on paper. According to the new order,

Unless voluminous or impracticable, the appendix to a paper copy need only include the content required by Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure 52.3(k) and 53.3(k).

This could affect the evolving conversation about whether to include just a few hyperlinks or whether to include as many hyperlinked authorities as possible. Under the old rules, embedding a document into your PDF meant that it also had to be printed and bound into the paper courtesy copies as well (and could have meant very large paper documents). The new rules give counsel more latitude. They “need only” include paper versions of the appendix items required by the rule.

This last change should let advocates focus on doing what makes the official electronic version as helpful as possible.

Here’s the full order: Electronic-Copy and Electronic-Filing Rules for the Supreme Court of Texas

1. The order carves out pro se litigants, who may use the e-filing system if they choose.

Most of her points are applicable to any appellate court. There are two points, however, that highlight an important difference in practicing in a state’s highest court.

Don’t confuse persuasive authority with controlling authority

Martha’s observation here might worry attorneys who think their previous arguments can be recycled in the Texas Supreme Court. Lower court briefs tend to wield authority as if it compels the court to decide your way.¹ In a court of last resort, that doesn’t go over so well:

It surprises me how many briefs before the high court cite to intermediate appellate court case law as though it were the law of the land.

She recommends that you ground your argument on principles from supreme court cases instead. I would add that your discussion of these cases should go beyond citing a holding to also explain why that holding should be persuasive. On many key points — perhaps any point so undecided that it warrants the Court stepping in — you won’t have a direct, controlling supreme court case.

Don’t confuse importance to you with “importance to the jurisprudence”

I didn’t see it at first, but I think there’s actually a subtle relationship between that point and her next one, which is about what happens when you write a brief in hyperbole:

Phrases like “unleashing havoc,” “travesty of justice” and “nefarious claims” are overly dramatic. A lawyer who writes as though the outcome of her case threatens to trigger the apocalypse achieves the opposite of the hoped-for effect.

This is at one level a basic tone problem. You can watch the eyes of appellate judges dim slightly when an oral advocate “unleashes” a jury argument.

But there’s something deeper going on, I think. Texas Supreme Court practitioners are told that we need to demonstrate the importance of our petition for review. If you are not used to thinking about the Court’s discretionary review, and only have the narrow perspective of the one case in front of you, it may not be obvious to you how. There’s no single answer — what we do is thankfully still more craft than science — but if you find yourself italicizing an adverb, you’re probably on the wrong path.

This is where Martha’s two points overlap. She is absolutely right that, when the Court sits down to decide the merits, the opinion will be grounded in its own precedent more than that of lower courts. The wrinkle is that the Court also has discretion over which cases to hear. When choosing, the nuances or weaknesses of those (mere) intermediate court of appeals opinions can be woven into a persuasive argument about improving the jurisprudence. On the other hand, if the advocate has treated those court of appeals opinions as already being (in Martha’s phrase) “the law of the land,” that suggests that the jurisprudence is set and might not warrant further attention.

1. If you think this always works in lower courts, may I point you to Karl Llewellyn’s discussion of “The Leeways of Precedent”?

The Court also formally accepted the Fifth Circuit’s invitation to answer a certified question about whether an insurer must cover mental anguish claims under a business’s liability policy.

Oral Arguments

September 13, 2011

• Thota: rescheduled for November 10, 2011

• The Finance Commission of Texas, The Credit Union Commission of Texas, and Texas Bankers Association v. Valerie Norwood, et al., No. 10-0121

• Basith Ghazali, M.D. v. Patricia Brown No. 10-0232

September 14, 2011

• City of Austin v. Harry M. Whittington, et al., No. 10-0316: rescheduled for December 6, 2011

• Texas Department of Public Safety v. Caruana, No. 10-0321

• Texas Department of Insurance, Hon. Mike Geeslin, Danny Saenz v. American National Insurance Co. and Americpublic/docketan Life Insurance Co., No. 10-0374 (Justice Hecht not sitting)

September 15, 2011

• Prarie View A&M University v. Diljit K. Chata, No. 10-0353

• Atmos Energy Corporation, Centerpoint Energy Resources Corp. and Texas Gas Service Co., v. The Cities of Allen, et al., No. 10-0375

• El Apple I, Ltd. v. Myriam Olivas, No. 10-0490

October 4, 2011

• SafeShred, Inc. v. Louis Martinez, III, No. 10-0426

• Shell Oil Company, et al. v. Ralph Ross, No. 10-0429

• Weeks Marine, Inc. v. Maximino Garza, No. 10-0435

October 5, 2011

• Natural Gas Pipeline Co. v. William Justiss, et al., No. 10-0451

• Hearts Bluff Game Ranch, Inc. v. The State of Texas and the Texas Water Development Board, No. 10-0491

• Matthew W. Wasserman, M.D. v. Christina Bergeron Gugel, No. 10-0513

October 6, 2011

• Port Elevator-Brownsville, LLC v. Rogelio Casados and Rafaela Casados, No. 10-0523

• In re United Scaffolding, Inc., No. 10-0526

• Rusk State Hospital v. Dennis Black and Pam Black, No. 10-0548

November 8, 2011

• Texas West Oaks Hospital, LP and Texas Hospital Holdings, LLC v. Frederick Williams, No. 10-0603

• In re the Commitment of Michael Bohannan, No. 10-0605

• Texas Electric Utility Construction, Ltd. v. Infrasource Underground Construction Services, LLC, No. 10-0628

November 9, 2011

• Kerry Heckman, et al. v. Williamson County, et al., No. 10-0671

• In re Frank Kent Motor Co. d/b/a Frank Kent Cadillac, No. 10-0687

• Jack Edward Milner v. Vicki Ann Milner, No. 10-0776

November 10, 2011

• Venkateswarlu Thota, M.D. and North Texas Cardiology Center v. Margaret Young, No. 09-0079 [Rescheduled from September 13, 2011]

• In re XL Specialty Insurance Co. and Cambridge Integrated Services Group, Inc., No. 10-0960

• Nicholas Traxler v. Entergy Gulf States, Inc., No. 10-0970