Court Opinion

ID: 9674249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:25:29.297827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.356795
License: Public Domain

DOGGETT, Justice,
dissenting on motion for rehearing.
While continuing to join fully with the previous dissent on respondent’s motion for *766rehearing filed by Justice Hightower, I write briefly to record the circumstances underlying the disposition of this cause.
Application for Writ of Error in this cause was filed on December 20, 1991 and oral argument was presented on April 28, 1992. Following full and complete deliberation over an extended period of time, the Court issued an opinion written by Justice Hightower on December 31, 1992, which was joined by six other members of the Court, while Justices Hecht and Gonzalez noted their dissent with an opinion to follow. This dissent was never filed, but on March 22, 1993, an amicus brief was received from the Texas Association of Business, the Texas Chemical Council, the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. On September 29, 1993, a new opinion written by Justice Hecht and joined by four members of the Court was issued, which changed the result and to which four members of the Court dissented in an opinion by Justice Hightower. The petitioner’s motion for rehearing captures the essence of what occurred here:
When an opinion from the Supreme Court is issued some eight months after submission and a 7-2 decision transforms nine months later into a 5-4 reversal of the earlier opinion, casual observers of the judicial process would conclude that something significant occurred in the jurisprudence in the intervening period. What intervened was the arrival of two new judges to the Texas Supreme Court and the filing of an hysterical amicus brief by business lobbyists that apparently induced two members of the Court to switch votes.
Despite nine months of presumed deliberation on the motion for rehearing, this Court’s majority opinion contributes nothing but confusion to the Texas jurisprudence while arriving at a result that is largely achieved by manipulation of the record.
One would hope that such circumstances would be extraordinary; unfortunately, they have become an all too ordinary way of considering matters at this Court. As earlier noted in Havner v. E-Z Mart, 846 S.W.2d 286, 287 (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., dissenting to order denying application for writ of error as improvidently granted), in which I expressed concern about the improvident granting of several cases that had been granted in December 1992, without ever according the parties involved an opportunity to present oral argument:
During this time, the law did not change, nor did the importance of the legal issues at stake diminish.
Remarkable as this may be, it surely comes as no surprise to those who have closely observed recent opinions of this Court reflecting a growing tendency of the majority to overrule past decisional law. Those who rely on Texas Supreme Court decisions as precedent do so increasingly at their peril.
The opinion of the majority on rehearing is also indicative of another disturbing trend— the willingness of the majority to allege it is relying upon a prior judicial decision when, in truth, the facts of the prior case could not pass muster under the reconstituted test that the majority announces. Such was the situation in Delaney v. University of Houston, 835 S.W.2d 56, 61-64 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., concurring), in which I objected to the majority’s seventeen-month delay following oral argument to resolve a claim set forth in a record composed of a three and one-half page affidavit of a rape victim. There the majority was not at all bothered by adopting a test which, when applied to the facts of the prior authority upon which it relied, would have produced an opposite result. See also C & H Nationwide v. Thompson, 1993 WL 483450, 37 Tex.Sup.Ct.J. 149, 163-64 (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., dissenting).
Here the controlling authority is Milligan v. Southern Express, Inc., 151 Tex. 315, 250 S.W.2d 194 (1952). As Justice Hightower has already noted, the majority’s opinion on motion for rehearing “effectively overrules Milligan.” 868 S.W.2d at 760 (Hightower, J., dissenting on motion for rehearing). Since the majority refused to respond or *767explain itself on this point, petitioner’s motion for rehearing quite appropriately notes:
Clearly, if Milligan is good law, then the Court’s majority opinion is not. If Milli-gan is overruled, the Court should say so. If traditional rules of legislative construction should be abandoned, then tell us what the new rules are. The bench and the bar are entitled to at least that.
As in Carrollton-Farmers Branch Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Edgewood Indep. Sch. Dist., 826 S.W.2d 489 (Tex.1992), not all of the delay which occurs at this Court is the product of neglect; some is very calculated. Such is the case here.