Court Opinion

ID: 9777930
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:28:06.013604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:02.543258
License: Public Domain

GONZALEZ, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the Court but do not agree with its reasoning. We should have swiftly and summarily held that the trial court committed error in ruling on the constitutionality of the disciplinary rules because the trial court could have denied the injunction on other grounds. I am also concerned that by ruling on the constitutional claim asserted here by way of a request for injunctive relief, we have set a dangerous precedent *405that will come back to haunt us. Other ingenious lawyers seeking to gain a postponement of a trial on the merits will buy time for their clients by merely seeking to enjoin the enforcement of the rules or law in question by simply alleging unconstitutionality. This manipulation of the process should not be allowed to parties who have an adequate remedy at law, such as O’Quinn does.
The Texas Trial Lawyers Association (TTLA), an association of attorneys who represent accident victims, filed an amicus brief with this court in support of vigorous enforcement of the State Bar rules prohibiting in-person solicitation. They assert that there is a growing problem in this State wherein a small group of attorneys send their “investigators” or “runners” to virtually every accident resulting in serious injury or death. There are reports of runners barging into hospital wards and/or funeral homes offering signing bonuses of $10,000 and more and/or offering to pay hospital or funeral expenses, in order to obtain the signature of a family member on a contingent fee contract. There are reports of runners impersonating priests and/or other clergy, as well as law enforcement officers who show up at the doorstep of a bereaved family with chauffered limousines ready to take the bereaved family to the office of the runner’s attorney. Some families have been bombarded with competing claims by numerous runners, each touting the benefits of signing a contract with their employer. There are also reports of runners signing up accident victims on blank contracts which they shop around to attorneys for the highest bid.1
I do not in any way mean to imply or suggest that O’Quinn has engaged in any of the misconduct which I have just described, but it serves in part to explain TTLA’s concern for the problem and it also shows the context in which the State Bar brought its complaint against O’Quinn. The disciplinary complaint against O’Quinn alleged that O’Quinn had violated the State Bar disciplinary rules not only by paying non-lawyers sums of money for recommending and securing his employment by various potential clients, but also by agreeing with attorney Benton Musslewhite that he would “finance Musslewhite’s law practice for and in consideration of the assignment of a portion of Musslewhite’s attorney’s fees to be earned in various cases in the future.” The State Bar also charged that O’Quinn failed to respond to the State Bar’s letter of inquiry and allegation regarding professional misconduct.
O’Quinn sought to prevent the State Bar from prosecuting him for these allegations. O’Quinn asserts that the State Bar Rules prohibiting such solicitation are unconstitutional and therefore, the Bar’s prosecution of him should have been enjoined. The disciplinary rules claimed to be unconstitutional are DR 1-102(A)(1), (2), (3), and (6), 2-103(A) and (C), and 3-102(A). The trial court held that these rules are constitutional and denied an injunction. O’Quinn filed this direct appeal which has been pending in our court for the last year.
Generally, equitable relief is not available to enjoin the prosecution of a suit if the only basis for the injunctive relief is a matter that may be set up as a defense in the ensuing action. Coker v. Logan, 101 S.W.2d 284, 288 (Tex.Civ.App.—Amarillo 1937, writ ref’d). The exception lies where the movant can prove that he will suffer *406irreparable injury if he is denied, injunctive relief. Id.
The subject of O’Quinn’s request for in-junctive relief is the constitutionality of the relevant disciplinary rules. O’Quinn could have raised, and in fact did raise, the constitutional challenge as a defense in the State Bar’s suit against him. He did not, however, allege and prove special circumstances indicating irreparable injury would occur if denied the injunction. See State v. Logue, 376 S.W.2d 567, 572 (Tex.1964). Since the claim for injunctive relief could have been denied on this ground, the trial court should not have reached the constitutional issue.
“A court will not pass on the constitutionality of a statute if the particular case before it may be decided without doing so.” Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas, Inc. v. Baber, 714 S.W.2d 310 (Tex.1986); San Antonio General Drivers, Helpers Local No. 657 v. Thornton, 156 Tex. 641, 647, 299 S.W.2d 911, 915 (Tex.1957). The trial court in the instant case should have decided the request for injunctive relief without passing on the constitutional challenge. By not doing so, the trial court erroneously gave O’Quinn an avenue for direct appeal to this court.
I also disagree with the court’s inclusion in its opinion of dicta regarding the State Bar’s alleged selective prosecution for solicitation of plaintiffs’ attorneys in personal injury litigation. Since O’Quinn did not plead that the disciplinary rules are constitutionally infirm because of alleged inequality and/or discriminatory enforcement, this observation or complaint by the court is more appropriate in a concurring opinion. Furthermore, this criticism is misdirected. We are the ones who promulgate the disciplinary rules for the State Bar and if there are problems with our rules, we have the power and the obligation to change them.
Moreover, the court misses the mark in comparing an attorney’s “wining and dining” of a corporate executive to a runner’s entreaties to a victim to retain the runner’s employer. One purpose of the disciplinary rules prohibiting client solicitation is to prevent accident victims and others in emotional distress from being subjected to overreaching by an attorney. This purpose was recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Ohralik v. State Bar Assn., 436 U.S. 447, 465, 98 S.Ct. 1912, 1923, 56 L.Ed. 2d 444 (1978). The Court noted there that the potential for overreaching is great “when a lawyer, a professional trained in the art of persuasion, personally solicits an unsophisticated, injured, or distressed lay person.” Id. Few would have great concern that a corporate executive being “wined and dined” is in a state of emotional distress that requires that he or she be protected from an attorney’s persuasiveness.
A second difference between corporate “wining and dining” and solicitation of victims of personal injury is the concern that the dignity of the profession and the dignity of the victim are eroded by uninvited approaches of lawyers and runners. The TTLA understood this concern in its amicus brief:
When a wife who has just learned of her husband’s death cannot even mourn her loss without being pursued by a pack of ‘investigators’ who are dispatched to scenes of tragedy to tout the services of lawyers, her dignity is eroded, her loss cheapened, her privacy trampled.
A corporate executive approached by a lawyer eager to be retained does not suffer the pain of intrusion that is suffered by a victim of personal injury who is approached at a time of vulnerability.
In summary, I concur in the court’s judgment. The trial court was correct in denying the temporary injunction. The trial court, however, should not have reached the constitutional challenge because there existed an alternative basis for denying injunctive relief, i.e., no proof of irreparable injury and the existence of an adequate remedy at law.

. As a result of the shameful conduct by brazen attorneys and runners who openly solicited business after the Delta # 191 crash at the DFW Airport in August of 1985, the leadership of the State Bar became concerned that something had to be done. In consultation with and cooperation by TTLA, the Texas Association of Defense Counsel, and the Texas Insurance Board, the State Bar drafted and adopted a Disaster Response Plan. Under this plan, the President of the State Bar, the Chief Disciplinary Counsel, the Director of Communications and a representative of the State Board of Insurance go to the site of a disaster within three hours after it occurs. Their sole function is to monitor compliance of the disciplinary rules. Hopefully, their presence on the scene will also keep the ‘'predators" of whatever stripe away, whether they be runners for lawyers or insurance adjusters. Through an effective use of the media, the victims and their families are informed of their arrival and the location on the scene where they can lodge complaints against unscrupulous lawyers. This plan was put into effect after the crash of Delta # 1141 in September of 1988. It appears to have been successful.