Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

The Texas Supreme Court’s 2008-09 term marks the 13th year of our Court Watch project – thirteen years spent analyzing the opinions of the Court and how everyday Texans are impacted by its actions.  This period has seen the Court grow increasingly protective of business interests at the expense of consumers, and the 08-09 term delivers much of the same bad news.

Some key statistics:

• Consumers prevailed in just 27% of cases involving an individual pitted against a corporate or governmental entity.
• In cases where a jury reached a verdict, the Texas Supreme Court reversed the jury’s decision 72% of the time.
• The average score on our Consumer Scorecard for the justices was just 32%.
• The average rate of agreement with the majority was 87%, indicating a lack of judicial debate or disagreement.

A number of new trends emerged this term.  Most notable was the Court’s penchant for shielding governmental entities from accountability.  The Court has a long history of protecting corporate wrongdoers, and that is unchanged as is evidenced by the Court’s reaffirmation of its wrongheaded and decidedly activist decision in Entergy v. Summers.  This term is marked by an increase in governmental immunity protections for state and local governments that put the lives and livelihoods of citizens at risk.  From whistleblowers to unsafe road conditions to abiding by a signed contract, the Court allowed local and state governments to hide behind a cloak of “sovereign immunity” rather than take responsibility for the harm caused to individual citizens.

There were, however, a few bright spots in this otherwise anti-consumer term.  For the first time since the 2001-02 term, the Court made some significant rulings in favor of consumers.  On a related note, three of the justices improved their consumer voting records, each topping 40% in favor of consumers with Justice Medina voting for consumers 49% of the time.  Finally, the Court has nearly halved the percentage of unsigned opinions it releases, opening itself to more accountability and transparency.  We applaud the Court for these positive developments and hope to see a new trend develop.

The 2008-09 term also marks the end of the Court’s four year stable composition of justices.  These nine justices have spent the past four terms together on the Court and, as might be expected, voting alliances have developed.  We hope that the replacement of Justice Brister with Justice Guzman will lead to a more balanced term in 2009-2010.

Read the full report here.

Texas Court Watch is a project of the Texas Watch Foundation, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization. Content that appears on this page has been produced by the Texas Watch Foundation for research and public education purposes.