At 4:30 PM on Monday, September 19, re:SearchTX sent me an email notifying me that my case had finally been transferred to a new judge. And when I followed the link that they thoughtfully provided, I learned that Judge Wheless had indeed filed an order transferring my case “to the 199th District Court of Collin County, Texas.”
Some quick research revealed that the 199th was Judge Angela Tucker’s court. As far as I could tell, Judge Tucker had never been associated with Scheef & Stone, so there was at least a chance that she would be able to remain on the case for more than 24 hours.
Exactly ten minutes later, while I was still trying to determine the ramifications of this sudden news, Mitch Little sent this email to Judge Tucker’s court coordinator, Leila Olivarri:
Leila,
The attached case was just transferred to Judge Tucker. We filed and had a TCPA Motion heard on August 25, 2022. That motion will be overruled by operation of law by this Friday, September 23 if not ruled upon.
Defendants would like to have Judge Tucker rule on it and are at the court’s service is [sic] additional information is needed or requested.
The following morning, Leila sent this short note back to Mitch: “Thank you, I have made Judge Tucker aware of the deadline.”
At that point, Judge Tucker had three days to read through hundreds of pages of documents and issue a ruling that would either allow my case to continue to trial or potentially leave me more than a hundred thousand dollars in debt. It didn’t seem fair to me that she was being forced to make such an important decision in so little time.
If Judge Bouressa had recused herself as soon as the case was assigned to her, Judge Tucker would have had thirty days to make her decision, not three days.
If Judge Wheless had assigned a new judge as soon as Judge Flint had recused himself, Judge Tucker would have had two weeks to make her decision, not three days.
In a memorandum in a previous case, Judge Tucker had expressed the opinion that she “can only be fair to both sides in this case if I read and carefully deliberate on all of the information submitted to the Court in written documentation and oral presentation.” She added that she did “not have time to read voluminous documents during the normal workday.” But in my case, she learned on a Tuesday that she had to make a decision by Friday. How could she possibly be expected to “be fair to both sides” under those conditions?
In that earlier case, she pointed out that she had spent “nights, weekends, and vacation time to review over 300 pages of documents submitted, my case file, my notes, and applicable case law.” In my case, she had to review nearly 200 pages of documents submitted, and she was given only three weekdays to do it, with no intervening weekends.
Hard of Hearing
I was especially concerned about the fact that Judge Tucker hadn’t presided over the TCPA hearing. The TCPA law requires a hearing, but the hearing had been conducted by Judge Bouressa, who had recused herself instead of issuing a ruling. I had made arguments during that hearing that I would have liked Judge Tucker to hear before she made a decision. Would she be able to access a transcript of the hearing before she issued her ruling? I asked that question multiple times and received conflicting responses, so I still don’t know the answer to what I considered to be a critically important issue.
As it happened, I had paid to have a transcript of the TCPA hearing created just the previous week. Would Judge Tucker have access to that transcript? That’s another question I asked without getting a definitive response.
In a final attempt to increase the chances that Judge Tucker would actually have access to the transcript of the TCPA hearing, I submitted something that I called Plaintiff’s Motion to Supplement the Record, to which I attached the transcript. I have since learned that there’s no such thing as a “Motion to Supplement the Record” at the district court level, so I’m guessing that submitting that motion did me no good whatsoever.
At a later hearing on a related issue, Judge Tucker said something that suggested to me that she was unlikely to have read the transcript that I filed:
“I get thousands of pages of documents filed into files in my court every day. They go to the clerk’s office. The only time I’m aware of what’s being filed is if someone schedules a hearing, sets it, and then it comes to my attention. … So though you might have several things you filed previously, I need for you to understand, since you’re representing yourself, that I probably haven’t reviewed or seen any of that.”
So through a series of unfortunate events, an admittedly overworked judge was being asked to render a decision in an artificially truncated period of time under conditions that she had previously described as unfair and probably without the benefit of being able to review the transcript of the hearing that the court had been required by law to convene.
I guess that’s what Texas calls justice.
Personally, I call it Tex Abuse.
Document Links
Notice of court transfer
Judge Tucker’s assignment
Email from Mitch to Leila
Email from Leila to Mitch
Judge Tucker’s memorandum
My motion to supplement the record
Transcript of hearing on motion to compel
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