The Texas Supreme Court handed down important decisions today in three cases in which Texans for Lawsuit Reform filed friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) briefs.

In re Space Explorations Technologies Corp. arose from a vehicular collision. The plaintiffs sought more than a million dollars for medical expenses, physical impairment, and physical pain and mental anguish from a low-impact, 7.5-miles-per-hour collision with a SpaceX vehicle. The plaintiff received medical care from healthcare providers to whom she was referred by her lawyer. The jury largely did not find this lawyer-driven medical treatment to be valid, awarding the plaintiff a very modest amount of money. Disappointed with the outcome, the plaintiff asked for a new trial. The trial court granted the plaintiff’s motion over the defendant’s objection. TLR’s amicus brief in this case encouraged the Supreme Court to reverse the order granting a new trial, arguing that the trial court’s justification for the order was improper. The Supreme Court agreed, setting aside the new trial order.  

In Werner Enterprises, Inc. v. Blake, a pickup driving eastbound on a Texas interstate lost control, crossed the grassy median, entered the westbound lanes, and collided head-on with an 18-wheeler. This tragic collision caused death and permanent injuries to passengers in the pickup, but evidence presented at trial showed that the driver of the 18-wheeler had split seconds to react, was traveling below the speed limit and not violating any traffic laws, and never lost control of the truck. For the 18-wheeler, it was an unavoidable accident. Nonetheless, a Houston jury awarded almost $90 million in damages to passengers and the family of passengers riding in the pickup. The Texas Supreme Court concluded today that Werner Enterprises did not, as a matter of law, cause the collision, a decision TLR encouraged the Court to make and believes is proper under the facts.

In In re Oncor Electric Delivery Co., the Texas Supreme Court was asked to determine whether utilities such as Oncor could be held liable for deaths caused by exposure to extreme cold temperatures during Winter Storm Uri. As many people will recall, Uri caused power outages across Texas. What is less well known is that a quasi-governmental entity, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), compelled the outages because Texas’s power grid was about to collapse. ERCOT ordered Oncor and other electric utilities to “shed load” immediately. In other words, the utilities were ordered to turn power off to thousands of Texas homes—and they complied. As a result, some Texans tragically suffered serious injuries and deaths. 

The plaintiffs in multiple lawsuits against the utilities asserted that the utilities created an “intentional nuisance” for which they should be held liable. TLR’s amicus brief argued that an intentional nuisance can exist only if the defendant was a source of the nuisance, not reacting to a nuisance created by another source. Here, the utilities did not create or exacerbate the prolonged freezing temperatures but instead reacted to the storm in a way in which they were compelled to act by a governmental entity. The Texas Supreme Court agreed. 

TLR applauds the Texas Supreme Court’s decisions in each of these critical cases.