How Algo Westlaw and Algo Google Scholar Failed the Rohrmoos Test, and How to Improve Case Law Citation With or Without Artificial Intelligence

An important recent opinion of the Texas Supreme Court illustrates remaining problems in automated processing of new decisional law with algorithms. Major commercial case law repositories, including Westlaw and Google Scholar got the case style wrong by misreading "Rohrmoos Venture" – the name of a joint venture listed as the first party in an appeal – as the first and last name of a natural person. As a result, an important state supreme court case now has two competing case styles: Correct citation format: Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, No. 16-0006, 2019 WL 1873428 (Tex. Apr. 26, 2019)Alternate citation format: Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, No. 16-0006, 2019 WL 1873428 (Tex. Apr. 26, 2019)The error has already propagated into subsequent opinions of intermediate courts of appeal (COAs). Unsurprisingly, the Texas Supreme Court itself cites its opinion with the correct case style, as do several of the fourteen courts of appeals. Four of them, however, have already used the alternative citation style, and one of these (the 3rd COA in Austin) has inconsistently used both case-style versions in two different cases. But even the Supreme Court’s own citation practices illustrate the unsatisfactory nature of the extant system of citation, and the need for an overhaul. When the Texas High Court handed down its Rohrmoos opinion on April 26, 2019, it also issued a companion per curiam opinion that addressed the attorney fee proof issue in the statutory fee-shifting context. The Court cited Rohrmoos – in which the issue arose under a contractual fee-shifting provision – but with blanks for volume and page numbers in the Southwestern Reporter. Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, ___ S.W.3d ___ (Tex. 2019) This double-blank South Western Reporter citation provides no useful information as to where to find the opinion, which is binding on the entire state as of the date of issuance. Due to contemporaneous release of both opinions, a WestLaw cite was obviously not yet available. But even when it was, and could have been used in a subsequently issued opinion, the Supreme Court did not include it. See JCB, Inc. v. Horsburgh & Scott Co., No. 18-1099, 2019 WL 2406971, n. 15 (Tex. June 7, 2019) (“Our recent decision in Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, ___ S.W.3d ___ (Tex. 2019), describes the current legal standards for awards of attorney's fees in Texas courts.”). The Texas system of citing precedents is outmoded and in need of revision to bring it up to 21st century realities of online opinion viewing and electronic legal research. Since 2003 all civil cases may be cited as legal authority in Texas, but only a subset is published in the South Western Reporter. Volume and page number in S.W.3d have lost their original purpose because bound volumes and soft thin-paper supplements are rarely pulled from shelves these days.Most appellate courts in Texas use Westaw citations for new cases and “unpublished” memorandum opinions, but not all do so. And when a companion case is decided simultaneously, no Westlaw or LEXIS number has yet been assigned, and could not therefore be used even if the issuing court were willing to do so. There is an obvious solution: The adoption and universal use of the official appellate case numbers for case law citation purposes, combined with the opinion release date, and a hyperlink to the official on-line docket. The court-assigned appellate case number has several distinct merits: It is unique within the entire Texas appellate system and is assigned at the time the new case is docketed, rather than at the time an order or opinion is issued. There is no confusion between intermediate and supreme court case numbers because the latter are shorter. Supreme Court case docket numbers lack the two digits that denote the COA and also omit the "CV" and "CR" designators, which are unnecessary because the Texas Supreme Court only hears civil cases. The COA case number identifies opinions as much as procedural orders issued in the same case, and it conveys additional information in concise form: the COA that hears the case (2 digits), the filing year (2 digits), and whether the case is civil or criminal (2 alphanumeric characters). All of these properties make the official appellate case numbers superior to South Western Reporter, Westlaw, and Lexis citations. Using the Rohrmoos case in the Dallas Court of Appeals as an example, No. 05-14-00774-CV identifies the Dallas COA (05), the filing year (14) and the civil nature of the case (CV). 00774 is the assigned sequential number. Westlaw citation: Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, 05-14-00774-CV, 2015 WL 5783696 (Tex. App.—Dallas Oct. 5, 2015, pet. filed March 9, 2016) Because the appellate cause number already identifies the COA with two component digits, city names would no longer have to be included in an updated uniform system of case law citation. For the same reason, the fact that two COAs have their seat in Houston would obviate the need to distinguish them with [1st Dist.] and [14th Dist.]. Today, all Texas Courts of Appeals issue their opinions in PDF and post them on their respective websites. If hyperlinks to the on-line dockets of cited cases were embedded in citations to the precedents within newly issued opinions, it would greatly improve access to a large corpus of recent jurisprudence for bench, bar, academics, and the general public. Such hyperlinks would mitigate problems related to inconsistent case style and citation formats, proprietary opinion numbering systems, and ____[placeholder]____ references to volumes and pages of hard-copy case law reporters that have not yet been printed. Such an updated system of citations with hotlinks to dockets would not undermine the value added by commercial providers through headnotes, annotations, citators, and other legal (re)search functionality features.