Opinion ID: 2834020
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Proceedings and Mootness

Text: Roughly 1,900 plaintiffs sued 30 defendants in Hidalgo County, alleging exposure to chemical fumes and leaks from several sites where pesticides were mixed or stored before the sites were placed in receivership in 1967 and remediated in 1980. The plaintiffs identified no particular incidents or products, instead alleging exposure to a “toxic soup” of emissions in the air for many decades. As we recently noted, no such claim “has ever been tried or appealed in Texas,” and thus “the tort is immature.” [3] Five years after filing, the trial court set the first trial for little more than six months away. Despite our admonitions that trial courts should “proceed with extreme caution” in setting consolidated trials in immature mass torts, [4] the trial court consolidated five claims for the initial trial. The five plaintiffs had little in common — ranging in age from 29 to 74, residing in various directions from two different sites, alleging exposure over different parts of seven decades, and suffering injuries from asthma and arthritis to miscarriages and heart disease, and in two cases damaged property. Shortly after the trial court’s order, we issued In re Van Waters & Rogers, Inc ., reversing the same kind of order in the same kind of case in the same county. [5] The defendants brought the opinion to the trial judge’s attention, but he changed nothing. Neither did the Thirteenth Court of Appeals, where the defendants sought mandamus relief to no avail. [6] But when we granted a stay and requested full briefing, the plaintiffs retreated, asking the trial court to (1) sever out the property claims, (2) drop one plaintiff, and eventually (3) withdraw its consolidation order and proceed to trial on just one plaintiff’s claims. The trial court granted these requests, ordering that “the personal injury claims of Plaintiff Guadalupe Garza proceed to trial.” We disagree with the dissent that this last order renders these proceedings moot for several reasons. First, in their petition for mandamus (as well as in the trial court), the defendants complained of two things — that the trial court erred in setting a consolidated trial “in contravention of In re Van Waters & Rogers, Inc. and in the absence of an adequate response to the Able Supply Interrogatory.” The trial court has withdrawn consolidation (the Van Waters problem), but one plaintiff’s claims have still been ordered to trial despite inadequate responses (the Able Supply problem). As the relief requested by the defendants is a trial of one plaintiff’s claims held a reasonable time after the Able Supply interrogatory is adequately answered, [7] a controversy still exists whether they are entitled to that. [8] Second, the defendants argue that while the plaintiffs have moved for deconsolidation in the face of this mandamus proceeding, even though they were unwilling to do so in the face of Van Waters , they have refused to give any assurance that they will not seek future consolidated trials inconsistent with Van Waters . The situation that gives rise to this proceeding is thus fully capable of repetition, and if review can be evaded by the modification of orders pending mandamus proceedings, the defendants would be put to the repeated expense of seeking review only to have it denied by last-minute changes in the trial court’s orders. An appellate court’s jurisdiction cannot be manipulated in this way. Third, our order staying the docket control order here preserved the parties’ positions as they were at the time, not as they hustled to change them thereafter. The plaintiffs apparently filed supplemental answers after the trial setting — not the order but the trial date itself. The question before us is not changed by knowing what experts the plaintiffs would have finally disclosed at trial; that they would not do so any earlier is precisely the defendants’ complaint. And while the defendants certainly did challenge the adequacy of those answers at oral argument (the first time the plaintiffs asserted them as an excuse), the question before us is not their adequacy but their timeliness. Finally, while we encourage parties to work out pretrial disputes so appellate courts need never consider them, we cannot encourage parties to manipulate pretrial discovery to evade appellate review. Pretrial cannot be conducted one way when appellate courts are looking and another way when they are not. As hundreds of similar claims remain in this case and the plaintiffs stoutly maintain they had no duty to supplement their answers at all, the question before us is not moot as it is capable of repetition in a manner that evades review. [9]