Second Court of Appeals

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued - Week of July 12, 2021.

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.

Draper v. City of Arlington, No. 02-19-00410-CV (July 15, 2021) (Kerr J., joined by Bassel and Womack, JJ.).

Held: In this interlocutory appeal arising from challenges under the Texas Constitution to two City of Arlington municipal ordinances regulating short-term rentals (STRs), the STR owners (1) failed to present evidence on their due-course-of-law and equal-protection claims tending to prove that the ordinances were not rationally related to objectives within the City’s police powers and (2) failed to show that they have standing to assert constitutional claims on their tenants’ behalf. The STR owners thus did not prove that they were likely to prevail on their claims, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying their temporary-injunction application seeking to enjoin the city and its mayor from enforcing the ordinances.

Evans v. State, No. 02-20-00097-CR (July 15, 2021) (Wallach, J., joined by Sudderth, C.J., and Walker, J.).

Held: The trial court properly denied Appellant’s motion for post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. First, Appellant’s motion alleged that the police mishandled and tainted the evidence in his case—facts which undermined Chapter 64’s chain-of-custody requirement. Second, Appellant failed to accompany his motion with an affidavit as Chapter 64 requires; although Appellant filed an unsworn declaration, the declaration was not made under penalty of perjury and thus could not serve in lieu of an affidavit.