On March 13, 2025, in agreement with GH&A’s argument, the Texas Supreme Court issued an order resolving an important question concerning the jurisdiction of Texas’ Fifteenth Court of Appeals. The order ensures that litigants around Texas may have ordinary civil appeals decided closer to home.
At trial, GH&A secured a $1 million judgment for its clients in Galveston County. The defendants filed an appeal over 200 miles away in Austin, before the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, the state’s newest appellate court. The Texas Legislature created the Fifteenth Court of Appeals for specific kinds of cases, such as business disputes over $10 million, or appeals involving a state board or department.
GH&A attorneys Angie Olalde, Andrew Mytelka and Victoria Rutherford moved to transfer the appeal to Houston, where most civil appeals from Galveston County are heard. As Ms. Olalde pointed out in an article, if every civil appellant can choose to appeal to the Fifteenth Court, “you’d be looking at a pretty unmanageable docket quickly.”
The Texas Supreme Court’s March 13, 2025 order confirmed that the Fifteenth Court was not intended “to grant every civil appellant the option of litigating” there. Otherwise, the Court would quickly become overburdened and its “justices would be unable to give special attention to those cases the Legislature has defined as critical to the State’s interests.”
GH&A’s successful Motion to Transfer is available here, and its Reply is available here.
