Opinion ID: 2425296
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: on petition for publication of opinion

Text: Petition to order the court of appeals opinion published pursuant to Rule 90(c), Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure is denied. Concurring opinion by ENOCH, J. Dissenting opinion by DOGGETT, J., joined by GAMMAGE and SPECTOR, JJ. Justice ENOCH concurs with denial of motion to publish. My colleague, Justice Doggett, reiterates points that are routinely raised in the continuing debate about whether the opinions of intermediate appellate courts should be published. Belied by the stridency of his commentary, Justice Doggett's opinion, however, simply demonstrates the problem encountered with a rule that dictates non-publication of an intermediate appellate court's opinion unless the opinion satisfies certain criteria. That is, that judges can disagree on whether a particular decision meets the criteria of Rule 90(d) and should, therefore, be published. [1] Tex.R.App.P. 90(d). I agree that this case exposes the problem with the non-publication rule. However, as with all debates there is another sidethe huge cost to legal practitioners, and ultimately the consumer of legal services, to maintain enormous libraries of legal treatises and case opinions. See David M. Gunn, Unpublished Opinions Shall Not Be Cited As Authority: The Emerging Contours of Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 90(i), 24 St. Mary's L.J. 115, 144 (1992); Hon. Frank G. Evans, Hon. James F. Bud Warren and Lynne Liberato, To Publish or Not to Publish? That is the Question, 24 Houston Law. 18 (July-August 1986). The fourteen courts of appeals in this state are issuing opinions in thousands of cases every year. See OFFICE OF COURT ADMINISTRATION, OFFICIAL DOCKET ACTIVITY REPORT FOR THE FOURTEEN COURTS OF APPEALS 6 (Aug. 1993). Between September 1992 and August 1993, a total of 2,169 opinions were ordered publish. But, if all opinions rendered had been ordered publish, the number of published opinions would have been 9,380. [2] In the debate over whether to have a nonpublication rule, it is important to note that all opinions, regardless of the publish designation, are available to the public. [3] They are public documents. To order publish of an opinion has no effect at all on the publicness of the opinion of the court. For the public, such an order only has the effect of requiring the opinion to be placed in a book of a private publisher, who then has a new product to sell to the lawyer, who then passes that cost on to the consumer. Of course, the legal effect of a publish[ed] opinion is that the case can then be used by the legal practitioner in the trial and appeal of cases. But, again, this means that a competent trial and appellate attorney will buy the book in which the opinion is publish[ed], and therefore, the consumer will ultimately pay the bill. Perhaps there is a better way to resolve the competing interests of, on the one hand, the ability of counsel to use an opinion that ultimately should have been published, but was not, and on the other hand, the reality of escalating costs for legal libraries. [4] However, it seems to me that moving to a resolution is not furthered by resorting to emotional language, appealing to the most cynical of cynics, or disparaging our fellow members of the judiciary. [5] Because I agree with the majority of this Court that the opinion by the court of appeals below does not satisfy the criteria for publish under Rule 90(d), I join with the Court's denial of the motion to publish.