Op-ed by Blake Bailey
As a trial lawyer and civil appellate lawyer for the past three decades, I take pride in the fact that I represent only those individuals who seek my help, and whose cases I believe have merit.
I fight hard for the rights of my clients, but in recent years, the deck has been stacked against them in the Texas Supreme Court.
I say this because several times, in trying to settle cases through mediation, insurance company representatives have told me they weren’t concerned about the outcome of a jury trial because an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court virtually assured them a victory.
More often than not, they were correct. This is not only disheartening to me as an advocate for my clients, but is an embarrassment to me as a member of the Texas Bar.
David A. Anderson, a professor at the University of Texas Law School, has published a statistical evaluation of opinions published by the Texas Supreme Court. Winter, 2007 26 Rev. Litig. 1.
Even considering nominal awards for the plaintiff, Anderson found that in 2004 and 2005, the court ruled in favor of defendants 87% of the time. In the same time period, the court found “no evidence” to support a plaintiff’s verdict in 82% of the cases in which a no-evidence claim was presented. This was despite the fact that in most of these decisions, the jury, the trial judge, and the three judges in the court of appeals had considered the evidence sufficient.
Anderson compared the Texas Supreme Court’s opinions regarding lawsuits against Wal-Mart from 1998 through 2005 to that of other state supreme courts, reasoning that the cases would be comparable. Outside of Texas, Wal-Mart won only 56% of their appeals. In Texas, it was 100%.
My opponent has received large donations from business and insurance groups and her campaign boasts of how judicial “reform” has made Texas a better place for business.
The role of a judge is to dispense justice fairly and impartially, not to favor one group over another.
The remedy for this obvious bias against individuals is not to twist opinions the other way to “get even.” The remedy is to issue carefully considered opinions, devoid of any personal or political agenda.
The challenge for today’s judiciary is to consider the wisdom of long-held legal opinions and applying it to our ever-changing world. At one time, a landowner had rights to his property “to the heavens.” One can only imagine how many times American Airlines would be guilty of trespass if the definition of land ownership had not changed.
The right to trial by jury was considered by Thomas Jefferson to be of paramount importance — greater, even, than the right to vote.
When the Supreme Court of Texas issues a finding of “no evidence,” and they are doing so at an alarming rate, they are in effect saying that the decisions of the 12 citizens who listened to the evidence as it was presented, the trial judge and the three Court of Appeals judges were ‘unreasonable’. This action is tantamount to stealing our right to a trail by jury….a right that is guaranteed by both the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
This is a right that should be preserved for all Texans.