Ryan Pitts

The Texas Court of Appeals for the Fifteenth District has issued an opinion deciding an issue of first impression on the Texas Business Court’s jurisdiction that will prove important for commercial litigation Texas over: Can a plaintiff amend its petition so as to defeat the Business Court’s jurisdiction after removal? The Fifteenth Court answered, “Yes,” but at the cost of permanently waiving the claims, theories or requests for relief that created jurisdiction.

Earlier this summer, the Texas Supreme Court decided two highly publicized, high-stakes cases arising out of Winter Storm Uri: Public Utility Commission v. Luminant Energy Co., about the power of the Public Utilities Commission to respond to statewide emergencies by issuing orders to adjust pricing of electricity in an emergency so as to set the prices at the high offer cap; and Public Utility Commission v.

Texas Bar Journal • January 2024 [OPINION] Observations regarding the development of the standard of review. Written by Ryan P. Pitts and Mark Trachtenberg1 As H. Victor Thomas and Randall O. Sorrels have helpfully laid out in their article, in the continued search for a workable standard of review for non-economic damages, we see a clear example of our common law system at work.