Second Court of Appeals

Week of January 19, 2016

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued - Week of January 19, 2016.

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.

Savering v. City of Mansfield, No. 02-15-00034-CV (Jan. 21, 2016) (Sudderth, J., joined by Gardner, J.; Meier, J., dissents with opinion).

Held: The trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Appellants' amended application for a temporary injunction when it had the discretion to believe or disbelieve any of the parties' conflicting evidence and from which evidence it had the discretion to determine that Appellants did not make the clear and compelling presentation of the extreme necessity or hardship required to impose the mandatory injunction requested by Appellants or the related, tangential prohibitive injunctions that they sought.

Dissent: Appellants had no obligation to demonstrate extreme necessity or hardship because the mandatory injunctive relief that they seek is merely incidental to the primary prohibitive injunctive relief that they seek.

State v. Swan, No. 02-14-00416-CR (Jan. 21, 2016) (Livingston, C.J., joined by Dauphinot and Sudderth, JJ.).

Held: Following the decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in State v. Villarreal, No. PD-0306-14, 2014 WL 6734178, at *21 (Tex. Crim. App. Nov. 26, 2014), we conclude that law enforcement violates a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights when it conducts a nonconsensual and warrantless search and seizure of the defendant's blood pursuant only to section 724.012 of the transportation code and without facts supporting an independent exception to the warrant requirement. We also hold that an officer's good faith (but incorrect) belief that section 724.012 alone justified the search and seizure of a defendant's blood does not create an exception to the exclusionary rule.