U.S. Court of Appeals

Federal Appeals Court Ruling on Lawsuit Against EPA is a Partial Loss For Dallas-based Luminant and Enviros

The ongoing legal war of many fronts among Dallas-based Luminant, the state of Texas, the EPA and environmentalists is mostly a war of incremental victories.This week, EPA arose victorious. Next month or year? Anybody's guess. Just know that this time, nobody (except the EPA) is totally happy with t ... More >>

Wendy Reves' $400 Million Collection Belongs to the Dallas Museum of Art, Judge Affirms

In 1985, the Dallas Museum of Art accepted one of the largest gifts in the institution's history: more than 1,400 pieces by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, and others from the personal collection of Wendy Reves, collectively valued at more than $400 million. A quarter century later and four years ... More >>

Fired Texas Prison Worker's Supposed Scented-Candle Allergy Does Not Count as a Disability

For 17 years, Tina Milton worked as a clerk at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Wynne Unit. Her job was to pore over inmate mail in search of coded gang messages, and she did it just fine until late 2006. That's when she returned from a sinus surgery and found that she could no longer sta ... More >>

The Strange Case of Jeff Baron, Domain-Squatting Web Pioneer Turned Legal Crusader

On November 9 at a downtown Dallas law office, some 153,000 Internet domain names hit the auction block. The winning bidder was an entity known as Trans, Ltd., which put down $5.2 million and scooped up the names over the objections of their previous owner, Ondova, LLC. That auction never should ha ... More >>

Planned Parenthood V. Texas, Round 1,867: Judge Rules PP Can Stay in the WHP, For Now

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it's true: the argument between the state of Texas and Planned Parenthood over the Women's Health Program looks like it's never, ever going to end. This case has dragged itself through state courts, federal courts, and back down to the state level again, ... More >>

Texas Will "Immediately" Defund Planned Parenthood After Court Refuses to Hear its Plea

That faint popping sound you heard last night was Governor Rick Perry uncorking a nice bottle of bubbly, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday refused a request by Planned Parenthood to rehear the case over its ban from the new Texas Women's Health Program (TWHP). Texas, it appears ... More >>

Dallas City Hall Thinks 911 Lawsuit is Rubbish; Deanna Cook's Family Begs to Differ

The sequence of events detailed in the lawsuit filed last month by the family of Deanna Cook was damning: Cook, screaming for help as her ex-husband attacked her, called 911. An understaffed emergency call center finally, after several minutes, dispatched officers, who stopped at a 7-Eleven and chec ... More >>

Appeals Court Says Planned Parenthood Can Be Banned From the Women's Health Program, Rick Perry Rejoices

Texas' game of women's health pingpong continues. A panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a preliminary injunction yesterday that had allowed Planned Parenthood to remain in the Medicaid Women's Health Program. In other words, PP is out. Again. The nonprofit was boote ... More >>

Texas Plans to Use Medicaid Expansion it Rejected to Pay For Women's Health Program

In early June, Governor Rick Perry was quick to announce that no state of his would be taking any of that tyrannical federal money to expand Medicaid coverage. Yet court documents filed by outgoing Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs claim that the state's new, Planned Parenthood-free W ... More >>

In Farmers Branch Immigration Fight, Competing Readings of Supreme Court's Arizona Ruling

Opposing counsel in a six-year legal battle over a proposed Farmers Branch immigration ordinance are trading letters to the judge, arguing, naturally, that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law supports their side. Last month, the high court struck down every provision of Ari ... More >>

What the Supreme Court's Ruling On Arizona's Immigration Law Means for Farmers Branch

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down much of Arizona's illegal immigration law Monday morning, leaving its most controversial, show-me-your-papers provision standing, and that only provisionally. Experts say the decision provides a road map to federal courts evaluating immigration laws enacted in plac ... More >>

Texas Can't Kick Planned Parenthood Out of the WHP After All, Appeals Court Says

Earlier this week, Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a preliminary injunction that kept Texas from kicking Planned Parenthood out of the Women's Health Program. It looked as though that was the first step toward a decision allowing Texas to keep Planned Parenthood out ... More >>

At a Time When Texas Electricity Is Scarce, Does It Make Sense To Export It To Mexico?

A company that supplies electricity to Texans called American Electric Power filed to renew its application to export electricity to Mexico with the U.S. Department of Energy back in December. It operates a 720-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Vernon, and apparently it has been supplying our so ... More >>

More Stormy Weather for Dallas Police Sergeant Stormy Magiera, Who's Been Arrested

​The woman you see at right, in a mugshot posted to the Collin County website, is Sergeant Stormy Magiera, a Dallas Police officer since September 2000. According to an email dispatched by the DPD this morning, Magiera was detained by Garland Police and arrested by Murphy PD on a warrant out of Mu ... More >>

In Dallas and Across Texas, More and More It's Life Over the Death Penalty

Via....not seeing a whole lot of action.​In the death penalty debate, Texas has a long-standing reputation for abiding by one guiding principal: an eye for an eye. But the state has increasingly chosen to holster its lethal-injection needles in recent years, with death-penalty sentences decrea ... More >>

Competence on Trial: The Strange Odyssey of Serial Dallas Lawsuit Filer Lester Ruston

Every decent-sized courthouse in the country has its own serial pain in the ass, the guy who thinks nothing of suing the kids who threw a ball over his fence or the cat who pooped in his yard. But there's a special subset of filing addicts: the inmates who while away their time in the pokey filing k ... More >>

Paul Clement's To-Do List Just Got Longer As He Tries to Toss Texas's Redistricting Maps

​On Wednesday we got our first look at the new-look Texas maps drawn by the court, which is attempting to rectify the U.S. Department of Justice's concerns that the state Legislature is attempting to keep Hispanics from voting for Hispanic candidates, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth. To which Texa ... More >>

As Federal Grand Jury Begins Calling Witnesses in JWP Case, the Past Collides With the Present

​I have been looking back at the federal corruption conviction that forced the late Al Lipscomb off the Dallas City Council in 2000. That conviction was set aside two years later by a conservative panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. We have lessons, people. Lessons. ... More >>

Carrollton Teen Sues Over Petty Cheerleading Beef, Is Laughed Out of Federal Court

​How often do federal appeals judges wade into the petty internecine struggles of high-school cheerleaders and their meddling mothers? We're going to go out on a limb and say it's rare. Rare and, when it does occur, deeply entertaining. In a recent decision, the stately jurists of the U.S. Co ... More >>

Fantasy Voter Fraud

U.S. Court of Appeals Rules That Watkins Didn't Dismiss Prosecutor Because of Race

​Back in '07, during his brief break from the paper version of Unfair Park, Out Fearless Leader Mark Donald profiled Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins -- "Impact Player of the Year" -- for Texas Lawyer. In that piece, Mark mentioned that two prosecutors fired by Watkins during the earl ... More >>

If Nothing Else, We Learn That In a Fight Over a Goat Sacrifice, the Goat Always Loses

Brandon ThibodeauxJose Merced​The sleepy suburb of Euless seems an odd spot for a battle over goat sacrifice. Perhaps that's what first attracted us to the story of Jose Merced, a commercial flight attendant who also happens to be a high priest in the Afro-Cuban religion called Santería, in which ... More >>

A court case forced a Santeria priest to reveal some of his religion’s secrets. Its ritual of animal sacrifice, he revealed on his own.

In Deep Doo-Doo: A Texas Prisoner's "Vulgar Pen" Is Not Protected From Penalty

Four years ago, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice guest by the name of George Morgan filed for a habeas corpus proceeding, which the state asked the court to dismiss. Morgan didn't take kindly to that, and in response to the state of Texas's request, Morgan sent to Assistant Attorney General Su ... More >>

Buzz Reviews the News of 2008: Yes. It Was All Bad.

Sex clubs in the 'burbs, teacher layoffs in the district, black holes in the commissioners court—Buzz makes perfect sense of 2008

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders

Wagman the Dog: Or, Enron Did It!

Paying the Piper

Legal bills mount as the county defends its failed jail health systems

Trial by Fire

A rookie Democratic judge faces tough on-the-job training

On What Legal Grounds?

The Big Squeeze

Thinking about taking out a payday loan? Think again, sucker.

Life After Death

Andre Lewis was eight hours from being executed, until the courts realized they had made a big mistake

Chicken-Fried Infamy

It's a batter battle as Texas faces Oklahoma

It Doesn't Suck.com

Not for a cyber-griper who won a legal victory against his corporate nemesis

2002 Revealed

An aging Buzz finds little to celebrate in the year gone by. What did you expect?

Sour Victory

Supreme Beef wins in federal appeals court, but not soon enough to save its plant

Al Strikes Back

Lipscomb appeal finds a receptive audience in New Orleans

Letters

Deathly Silence; It Is Rocket Science; Plain Ignorant

For God and Country

For a South Oak Cliff church considered a model for mixing faith and government, the line between church and state is thin indeeda

Off the Killing Floor

Dallas-based Supreme Beef wins a major round in its court battle with the USDA

:cueless

Buzz hacks through the past in search of the cool cats and fools of the year that was

Taxing Situation

A tax-protesting CEO enlists his employees in the cause

Deep impact

A West Texas divorce case could soon change the nation's gun laws

Letters

It's the money; Birth pains

Impossible dreamer

Fearless reformer or legal terrorist? Bobby Wightman-Cervantes makes a run for the Senate. The Texas Bar says he should have his head examined.

Good time Charlie

The don of Dallas criminal lawyers, Charles Tessmer reshaped justice through decades of hard-fought cases and hard drink

Reno vs. Belo

The U.S. attorney general accuses WFAA of violating anti-wiretapping laws in the Peavy case

The Lie Detector

From the mayor of Atlanta, who was unjustly accused of graft, to a California man wrongly sentenced to life in a Texas prison, polygraph examiner Eric Holden found the truth that helped set them free

Welcome to the neighborhood

North Dallas residents find that having a housing project for a neighbor isn't so bad

Smut patrol

Cincinnati stamps out sin--and civil rights, besides