A party to a lawsuit in a Harris County district court has appealed the judgment in the case to the statewide 15th Court of Appeals, which was created by the Legislature in 2023 to hear, among other things, appeals involving the State of Texas, constitutional issues, and business court matters.
So what, you might ask? Rather than asserting the 15th Court’s jurisdiction under the matters over which the court has exclusive jurisdiction (§ 22.220(d), Government Code), the appellant argues that the court has jurisdiction over its appeal by virtue of § 22.220(a), which provides that “each court of appeals has appellate jurisdiction of all civil cases within its district of which the district courts or county courts have jurisdiction when the amount in controversy or the judgment rendered exceeds $250, exclusive of interest and costs.” The appeal has, as you might expect, drawn a vehement response from the plaintiff in the case, who has filed a motion with the court to transfer the appeal to the Houston [14th] Court of Appeals, which has already decided two appeals in the case and dismissed a third (see plaintiff’s motion to transfer below).
The case in question, Harbor America Central, Inc. v. William Reeves (No. 15-24-00128), arose from a dispute between Harbor, a company that provides human resource management and staff leasing services, and Reeves, a former employee, over a covenent not to compete in Reeve’s employment contract. When Reeves did not receive commissions he alleged Harbor owed to him, he sued the company for breach of contract and sought $1.6 million in damages. Harbor counterclaimed for breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, conversion, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of the duty of loyalty. Reeves responded by filing a TCPA motion to dismiss, arguing that Harbor’s counterclaims infringed his right of association (i.e., his partnership with another former Harbor employee to start a competing business). The TCPA issue went up twice to the 14th Court, which eventually determined that the pre-2019 TCPA applied to Harbor’s counterclaims (see Reeves v. Harbor Am. Cent., Inc., 552 S.W.3d 389 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.]2018, no pet.); Reeves v. Harbor Am. Cent., Inc., 631 S.W.3d 299 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2020, pet. denied). The court remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether Harbor could establish by clear and specific evidence a prima facie case for each of its counterclaims. Presumably, that didn’t go well for Harbor, which appealed for a third time. But Harbor voluntarily sought dismissal of the third appeal, which the court of appeals granted (see Harbor Am. Cent., Inc. v. Reeves, No. 14-21-00526-CV, 2021 WL 4472680 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] Sept. 30, 2021, no pet.).
An added complication in the case is that 15th Court Chief Justice Scott Brister worked on the case when still in private practice, so we presume that the Governor will need to appoint a temporary justice to fill out the panel that considers whether it has jurisdiction over Harbor’s appeal. In any event, no briefs have yet been filed beyond the plaintiff’s motion to transfer. We’ll certainly keep an eye on this case as it unfolds.
