Here is a roundup of recent court cases and legal decisions affecting litigation and injury law practice.
Last Friday, the Texas Supreme Court denied a petition for review in the matter of CITY OF SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS v. SAN ANTONIO FIREFIGHTERS' ASSOCIATION LOCAL 624; from Bexar County; 4th Court of Appeals District (04-15-00819-CV, 533 SW3d 527, 08-23-17). This case involved the so-called "evergreen" clause in the collective bargaining agreement between the city of San Antonio and its Fire Department union.
The Texas Supreme Court will not take on the City of San Antonio’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that upheld the firefighters union contract’s 10-year evergreen clause, according to a list of court orders published Friday on the court’s website.
The City argued in its original 2014 lawsuit that the clause, which keeps most of the terms of the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association’s expired contract with the City in place for 10 years or until a new agreement is reached, is unconstitutional because it binds the City to unsustainable spending practices. But the Fourth Court of Appeals and a district court ruled in favor of the fire union.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is total vindication for our position which two courts have already ruled in our favor,” reads a statement from the fire union, which goes on to characterize City Manager Sheryl Sculley as a power-hungry “unelected out of town bureaucrat.”
First responders, as governmental employees, are required to be covered by workers' compensation. In recent years, with the burgeoning costs of health insurance coverage for fire and police retirees, the city of San Antonio has made an obvious and concerted effort to offload workers' compensation costs onto the health insurance side of the equation in order to game the numbers and obtain leverage in contract negotiations. This has had the unfortunate effect of harming the careers and medical situations of many first responders. This ruling by the Texas Supreme Court shifts back some leverage to the first responders in negotiating their contracts and put pressure on the city to come to the table in good faith to negotiate regarding the disputed issues, but the city will likely continue its full court press against first responders for the near future.
A second recent matter that is worthy of mention is the criminal trial of former state Senator Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio). Carlos Uresti was a key figure in local democratic politics for well over a decade and had a considerable influence on the local legal scene. He had a successful private practice, including personal injury matters, and his criminal trial arose out of one of those personal injury cases. This is a case where the wrongful death suit that Uresti handled resulted in a significant monetary settlement for his client, but Uresti took the unfortunate next step of trying to straddle the ethics lines by advising his personal injury client on how to invest the money with an oilfield services company with whom he also had a relationship as an attorney. This investment went south and resulted in the criminal claim as well as civil disputes. This case is important because it is a reminder of how often injury lawyers can get personally involved in the affairs of their clients. When large sums of money are involved, it is difficult to see clients making potentially poor decisions, but actually the worst thing that a lawyer can do in that situation is get his own judgment clouded by his personal involvement in the investment itself.
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