Appellate Partners Secure Defense Victory in Texas Supreme Court

Statutory Right to Appeal Wrongful Temporary Injunctions

The appeal of this case began as a routine challenge to the merits of a temporary injunction, bringing arguments that the injunction did not preserve the status quo and that plaintiffs showed neither a probable right to the relief on their causes of action nor an imminent and irreparable injury. The review of the injunction’s merit was derailed, however, when the Court of Appeals dismissed for lack of jurisdiction—ruling instead that the parties’ request for a continuance of trial (and the trial court’s sua sponte abatement pending resolution in the Court of Appeals) was “an effort to obtain an advisory opinion.”

This ruling was appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, where the Thompson Coe Appellate team argued that the Court of Appeals’ ruling improperly deprived their clients of their statutory right to interlocutory appeal and that the line of caselaw cited by the Court of Appeals was unsound and, in any event, did not apply in cases where the trial court unilaterally abates a case pending resolution of the appeal. The Texas Supreme Court agreed, unanimously granting the petition for review and reversing the judgment of the Court of Appeals. The Court expressly disapproved of the line of caselaw refusing to review temporary injunctions when trial court proceedings have been delayed.

The Texas Supreme Court’s ruling reverses a line of caselaw from the lower courts of appeal that effectively denied litigants their statutory right to appeal wrongful temporary injunctions.