Personal Injury and Other Lawyers Criticize Texas Supreme Court

Brooks Schuelke

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The Dallas Morning News has an enlightening article that discusses lawyers' grilling of Texas Supreme Court justices about potential biases.

The article states:

Texas' Supreme Court justices aren't in the habit of defending their judicial records, much less from lawyers grilling them as they would an uncooperative witness.

But that's just what happened in September at a continuing education event at Horseshoe Bay Resort hosted by the Dallas Bar Association, where lawyers peppered two justices with questions about their impartiality.

Sample query: Do the justices hunt for plaintiff victories in appeal courts just so they can overturn them?

"To be honest, I've never seen anything quite like that in a bar group," Justice Paul Green told Texas Lawyer magazine after the event.

And many feel that this criticism is justified. From the article:

Alex Winslow of Texas Watch is tracking the court's rulings for its 2006-07 term, as he has for the last decade.

By his count, civil defendants won favorable rulings in a relatively equitable 52 percent of cases in the court's 2000-01 term, but the number has been soaring since then. In 2005-06, 82 percent of rulings went in favor of defendants, he said.

"This is an anti-consumer court," he said.

Of course, the court's spokesman and defense lawyers support the Court. We just hope that when the next election rolls around, the public heeds the warnings that are now starting to show up.