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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS
════════════
No. 05-0959
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Lamesa Independent School District, Petitioner,
v.
David Booe d/b/a Booe Roofing Company, Respondent
════════════════════════════════════════════════════
On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh District of Texas
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PER CURIAM
David Booe d/b/a Booe Roofing Co. sued Lamesa Independent School District, seeking to recover under breach of implied contract and quantum meruit theories. The trial court denied the District’s plea to the jurisdiction based on governmental immunity from suit, issuing four conclusions of law in support of the denial. The court of appeals affirmed, __S.W.3d__, basing its decision entirely on the trial court’s first conclusion—that the District’s immunity is waived by section 11.151(a) of the Education Code, which provides that “[t]he trustees of an independent school district constitute a body corporate and in the name of the district may . . . sue and be sued.” Tex. Educ. Code § 11.151(a).
The court of appeals’ holding on section 11.151(a) conflicts with our decisions in Tooke v. City of Mexia, 197 S.W.3d 325 (Tex. 2006), and Satterfield & Pontikes Construction, Inc. v. Irving Independent School District, 197 S.W.3d 390 (Tex. 2006), issued after the court of appeals’ opinion in this case. As we held in Satterfield, section 11.151(a) is not a clear and unambiguous waiver of immunity. Satterfield, 197 S.W.3d at 391.
The court of appeals also noted that, while this case was pending on appeal, the Legislature enacted subsections 271.151-.160 of the Local Government Code, which retroactively waive sovereign immunity for certain claims against local government entities, including public school districts. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code §§ 271.151–271.160. Booe does not argue that the District’s immunity is waived by the newly enacted sections, and we express no opinion on that subject.
Accordingly, we grant the District’s petition for review, and without hearing oral argument, Tex. R. App. P. 59.1, reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and remand the case to that court to consider the District’s remaining issues. Tex. R. App. P. 60.2(d); Anderson v. Gilbert, 897 S.W.2d 783, 785 (Tex. 1995).
OPINION DELIVERED: September 28, 2007
Showing posts with label Cornyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cornyn. Show all posts
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Monday, June 04, 2007
Watt does TLR Et Al think @ them Apples?
San Anton lawyer could challenge Cornyn
Watts assails senator for allegiance to Bush, Iraq commitment.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Fueling Democratic hope that Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn's political appeal will soon crumple, San Antonio lawyer Mikal Watts has been testing a challenge to Cornyn, whom he assails for a "blind allegiance" to President Bush and the Iraq war.
Watts, a Corpus Christi native and plaintiffs' lawyer who made his name in legal circles suing Firestone, Chrysler and other big companies, could decide by June whether to declare his 2008 candidacy for the seat that Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general, won in 2002.
Lauren Victoria Burke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Cornyn Republican senator says he disagrees with Bush on some issues.
Alicia Mireles
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mikal Watts Big-time donor, lawyer known for fighting giant companies.
Watts, 39, ranks among a handful of Democrats who might leap in. They include former state Comptroller John Sharp, U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson of Houston and state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston, who has said he is flattered by such speculation.
"I am incredibly worried about this war," Watts said last week. "I have no faith that John Cornyn is going to take one step to bring our men and women home."
Cornyn, 55, opposes the Democratic push for deadlines for U.S. troops to return from Iraq.
He insisted that he's not in lock step with the president.
"George Bush is a friend of mine, and he's got the toughest job on the planet," Cornyn said. "I've agreed with him when I think he's right. And I've disagreed with him when I think he's wrong."
Cornyn named as differences his support for expanded access to government records; for the regulation of tobacco as a drug (he co-sponsored legislation on the issue with U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.) and for comprehensive immigration reform: "I worry that the administration is so eager to have a solution that they're not going to insist on an enforceable border protection in place or workplace verification" of employees' immigration statuses.
Democratic activists rate Cornyn as a surprisingly little-known incumbent. A poll of 800 voters conducted April 11-15 for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee suggests that 33 percent did not recognize his name. The poll found that 47 percent of voters favored Cornyn for re-election, against an unnamed Democrat at 38 percent.
Despite recent Texas election results, Democrats envision Republican Texas recoiling from Cornyn just as voters in some states rejected Republicans last year, resulting in Democratic majorities in Congress — in great part a reaction to tough going in Iraq.
Matt Angle, who steers the Lone Star Project, a political committee supportive of Texas Democrats, rates Cornyn as a "stand-and-salute, me-too" senator who can be taken.
History suggests that it's rare for an incumbent senator to lose. The last incumbent senator from Texas to fall was Democrat Bob Krueger in 1993; he'd been appointed to fill an opening. Previously, Democrat Ralph Yarborough lost to a well-funded challenger from the conservative wing of the then-dominant Democrats, Lloyd Bentsen. That happened in 1970.
Norm Ornstein, a congressional expert with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, likened the Democrats' chances in Texas to a snowball's in hell.
"Talk about a steeply uphill battle," he said.
Angle conceded that Cornyn, who totes more than $3 million in campaign cash and a 12-election winning streak dating to his roots as a Bexar County judge, remains the favorite. But "the favorite doesn't always win," he said.
Because of Texas' size, a candidate could need at least $15 million to be competitive.
Watts, whose law firm has won verdicts and negotiated settlements exceeding $1 billion since its founding in 1997, said that if he runs, he won't bankroll the campaign, but he'll have resources to "finish the deal."
He's proved a big donor, giving more than $2 million personally or through his law firm to state candidates or groups since 2002, according to an online search of filings at the Texas Ethics Commission. He has given more than $114,000 to candidates for federal office since 2004, according to Political Money Line.
Last month, Watts hosted a fundraiser at his home that yielded $1.1 million for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.
The event led Austin activist Glen Maxey to enthuse over Watts. Maxey wrote on the Burnt Orange Report, a Democratic blog, that Cornyn is "going down."
Watts is married and has three children. He clerked for Tom Phillips, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, after law school and then joined a Corpus Christi firm. He left the firm, he said, after presenting his boss with a note he'd scrawled his first day on the job, vowing to have his own firm by age 30.
Early on, the Watts Law Firm had a reputation for battling large corporations, according to Law.com, including a 1998 automotive defect case in which the jury awarded $80 million — at the time the largest such verdict in state history.
The firm, which has offices in Houston, San Antonio, McAllen and Brownsville, specializes in catastrophic personal injury, products liability, aviation and toxic torts, according to the site.
Watts, who moved to San Antonio last year and enrolled his children in a local school, said he hasn't scribbled a vow to reach the Senate by a certain age.
"I'm not quite so Clinton-esque," he said, referring to the former Democratic president.
wgselby@statesman.com; 445-3644
Additional material by staff writer Tara Copp.
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