Opinion ID: 2416739
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: standards for conflict jurisdiction

Text: Section 22.225(b)(3) of the Texas Government Code makes jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals generally final in the courts of appeals. [3] However, section 22.225(c) vests jurisdiction in this Court over, among other matters, interlocutory appeals in which one of the courts of appeals holds differently from a prior decision of another court of appeals or of the supreme court.... [4] Section 22.225(c) expressly incorporates the standards for conflict jurisdiction in section 22.001(a)(2) of the Government Code. That section grants this Court jurisdiction over case[s] in which one of the courts of appeals holds differently from a prior decision of another court of appeals or of the supreme court on a question of law material to a decision of the case. [5] Coastal asks us to exercise jurisdiction over the class-certification order pursuant to these provisions. Noting that it is difficult ... to establish conflicts jurisdiction, [6] we stated in Gonzalez v. Avalos that [f]or this Court to have jurisdiction on the ground of conflict it must appear that the rulings in the two cases are `so far upon the same state of facts that the decision of one case is necessarily conclusive of the decision in the other.' [7] In Christy, we remarked that [f]or jurisdiction to attach on the basis of conflict[,] [t]he conflict must be on the very question of law actually involved and determined, in respect of an issue in both cases, the test being whether one would operate to overrule the other in case they were both rendered by the same court. [8] Though this standard is strict, it does not require factual identity for two cases to conflict. While occasionally this Court has suggested that cases cannot conflict without nearly identical facts, [9] more often we have emphasized that the decisions need only be  so far upon the same state of facts that they would control one another. [10] In short, cases do not conflict if a material factual difference legitimately distinguishes their holdings. On the other hand, immaterial factual variations do not preclude a finding of jurisdictional conflict. A conflict could arise on very different underlying facts if those facts are not important to the legal principle being announced. In applying the Christy standard, we have ignored factual differences not material to the holdings being compared. [11] For example, in Newman v. Obersteller [12] we had to decide whether section 101.106 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code [13] is an immunity statute for purposes of triggering a right of interlocutory appeal under former section 51.014(5) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The court of appeals in Obersteller held that section 101.106 was not an immunity statute, while other courts in City of Galveston v. Whitman [14] and Davis v. Mathis [15] earlier had concluded to the contrary. Even though these three cases arose under very different facts Obersteller involved a suit by a high school student against his coach for intentional infliction of emotional distress; Whitman involved a suit against emergency service dispatchers for alleged delay in responding to an emergency; and Davis involved a suit against a bus driver arising from a traffic accidentwe held in Obersteller that the conflicting statutory interpretations vested this Court with jurisdiction over the interlocutory appeal. [16] With this understanding of our conflict jurisdiction in mind, we turn to whether the court of appeals' opinion in this case conflicts with RSR Corp. v. Hayes, [17] as Coastal asserts.