Supreme Court of Texas

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No. 22-0296

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Constantino Meza, Plutarco Meza, Daniela Meza, and Alejandra 

Meza,

Petitioners,

v.

The City of Fort Worth, Texas, 

Respondent

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On Petition for Review from the

Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas

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JUSTICE BOYD, joined by Justice Lehrmann and Justice Young, 

dissenting to the denial of the petition for review.

This Court’s approach to section 101.101(c) of the Texas Tort 

Claims Act has not been a model of consistency or clarity, to put it 

mildly.1 In our last case about this provision, we said the statute 

1 See Worsdale v. City of Killeen, 578 S.W.3d 57, 78–79 (Tex. 2019) 

(BOYD, J., concurring) (illustrating how “every time the Court has addressed 

section 101.101(c) since Cathey, it has changed the rule it had most recently 

announced”). See generally City of San Antonio v. Tenorio, 543 S.W.3d 772, 

788–89 (Tex. 2018) (BOYD, J., dissenting) (detailing what I viewed as the 
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requires evidence that the governmental body had “actual notice it may 

be responsible for the” harm alleged. Worsdale v. City of Killeen, 578 

S.W.3d 57, 59 (Tex. 2019) (emphasis added). The statute “requires 

neither adjudication of liability nor confession of fault,” we explained, 

and whether the governmental body “believed it was liable or not is not 

the standard.” Id. at 65, 67. Instead, we held, section 101.101(c) requires 

evidence that the governmental body was “subjectively aware that its 

alleged acts or omissions contributed to or produced injuries in the way 

the claimant ultimately alleges.” Id. at 64.

This case provides the Court with the much-needed opportunity 

to expound on that requirement in light of two other governing 

principles. First: “There will, of course, be times when subjective 

awareness must be proved, if at all, by circumstantial evidence.” Tex. 

Dep’t of Crim. Just. v. Simons, 140 S.W.3d 338, 348 (Tex. 2004). And 

second, when considering such circumstantial evidence, courts must 

indulge every reasonable inference and resolve all doubts in the 

claimant’s favor. Alamo Heights Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Clark, 544 S.W.3d 

755, 771 (Tex. 2018). 

This case arises out of a rear-end collision caused by a driver who 

was fleeing a Fort Worth police officer, travelling one hundred miles per 

hour down North Main Street near the Stockyards around eleven o’clock

in the morning. An innocent woman was killed, and her husband was 

injured. Not surprisingly, everyone with the City concluded that the 

Court’s mistaken approach to the statute in Cathey v. Booth, 900 S.W.2d 339 

(Tex. 1995) (per curiam), and its progeny).
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pursuing officer complied with department policies and that the crash 

would have occurred even if he had stopped pursuing the suspect sooner. 

They all denied that they ever believed any officer did anything wrong 

or did anything to cause the accident. 

The claimants point to other evidence, however, that supports a 

reasonable inference that the Department was aware soon after the 

crash that its officer’s conduct contributed to causing the accident. The 

City conducted an extensive investigation of the accident and concluded 

that “fleeing or evading” the police was one of the contributing causes. 

The fleeing suspect was charged with “evading arrest or detention,” 

elevated to a second-degree felony for causing death “as a direct result.” 

The police commander met with the pursuing officer at least three 

different times to “discuss the pros and cons to continuing or 

terminating pursuits in the future.” At the commander’s order, a police 

captain also met with all the sergeants and lieutenants to “discuss the 

same.” The commander concluded the accident provided a “good 

opportunity to debrief” the current policy governing “short pursuits” and 

“quickly evolving incidents.” The assistant chief concurred with the

“additional training” and “corrective actions.” Eight months later, the

Department changed its pursuit policy so that it no longer permits a 

vehicle pursuit based on a traffic violation or suspicion of a stolen 

vehicle, two of the justifications relied on for the pursuit at issue here. 

Section 101.101(c) is about notice, not liability. The challenged 

conduct may not turn out to be within the statute’s waiver of immunity; 

the claims may fail on the merits. Such a resolution may come quickly. 

Terminating the litigation on the ground of inadequate notice, though, 
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seems incompatible with our current understanding of the statute. If it’s 

true, as this Court has said, that section 101.101(c) requires claimants 

to show only that the governmental defendant was aware that its 

conduct “may have” caused the harm alleged, that claimants can rely on 

circumstantial evidence to establish such awareness, and that courts 

must draw every reasonable inference from that evidence in the 

claimants’ favor, then these claimants make a compelling case that they 

satisfied the statute’s requirement. If they didn’t, then the Court should 

take this case to provide further guidance on what qualifies as “actual 

notice.” 

I respectfully dissent from the Court’s denial of this petition for 

review.

Jeffrey S. Boyd

Justice

OPINION FILED: April 14, 2023