Second Court of Appeals
Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued - Week of February 14, 2022.
NOTE: Summaries are prepared by the court's staff attorneys and law clerks for public information only and reflect his or her interpretation alone of the facts and legal issues. The summaries are not part of the court's opinion in the case and should not be cited to, quoted, or relied upon as the opinion of the court.
Links to full text of opinions (PDF version) can be accessed by clicking the cause number.
Arbuckle v. Wichita Cnty. Tex. Adult Probation, No. 02-21-00085-CV (Feb. 17, 2022) (Sudderth, C.J., joined by Womack and Walker, JJ.).
Held: An adult probation officer such as Appellant does not fall within Texas Family Code Section 261.101(b)’s definition of a “professional.” Because Section 261.110 of the Family Code protects an employee from being terminated only if that employee is a “professional,” and because that Section’s waiver of sovereign immunity is similarly limited, Appellant’s wrongful termination claim was barred by sovereign immunity.
In re D.L., No. 02-22-00011-CV (Feb. 17, 2022) (orig. proceeding) (Walker, J., joined by Kerr and Birdwell, JJ.).
Held: Despite Relator’s testimony that she surrendered the children to their father, that she encouraged the children to go with him, and that the children refused, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by holding Relator in contempt for voluntarily not surrendering the children to their father as required by the trial court’s possession-and-access order. See In re White, No. 01-18-00073-CV, 2018 WL 2305524, at *4 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] May 22, 2018, orig. proceeding) (per curiam) (mem. op.); Ex parte Rosser, 899 S.W.2d 382, 385–86 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1995, orig. proceeding).
Walton v. State, Nos. 02-20-00036-CR, 02-20-00037-CR, 02-20-00038-CR (Feb. 17, 2022) (Walker, J., joined Sudderth, C.J., and Kerr, J.).
Held: The acts constituting recklessness—as pled in an unlawful restraint indictment —are not essential elements of an unlawful restraint offense and are thus not included within the hypothetically correct jury charge for purposes of a sufficiency analysis. Additionally, the offense of unlawful restraint is a continuous, ongoing event that does not end until the victim is free of the restraint; the offense is not complete when the victim requests to be released, and the defendant refuses to comply.
The two deadly conduct judgments [02-20-00037-CR, 02-20-00038-CR] must be modified to delete the $2,000 fines. We retain the fine set out in the unlawful restraint judgment because in a case in which multiple convictions are obtained in a single proceeding, such as this one, we retain only the fine for the offense of the highest category.