This is a cross-post from 600Commerce, which follows commercial litigation in the Dallsa Court of Appeals.

The Court heard arguments today in In re Estate of Johnson, No. 05-18-01193-CV (Nov. 4, 2019) (mem. op.), a Fifth Court of Appeals case, which presents a fundamental issue in Texas probate law–whether a beneficiary’s acceptance of benefits under a will defeats that beneficiary’s standing to challenge that will. 

In an administrative-law case about a dispute between chiropractors and traditional physicians, a question of “standing” was raised, and again the Texas Supreme Court mentioned its recent Pike opinion.

“The [Chiropractic] Board characterizes [Tex. Gov’t Code] § 2001.038(a) as a ‘statutory standing’ provision. Constitutional standing is a prerequisite for subject matter jurisdiction. In Finance Commission of Texas v. Norwood, we treated § 2001.038(a) ‘as but another expression of the general[,] [constitutional] doctrine of standing.’ But last Term in Pike v. EMC Management, LLC, we discouraged the use of the term standing to describe extra-constitutional restrictions on the right of a particular plaintiff to bring a particular lawsuit. ‘[T]he question whether a plaintiff has . . . satisfied the requisites of a particular statute’, we said, ‘pertains in reality to the right of the plaintiff to relief rather than to the subject-matter jurisdiction of the court to afford it.'”

Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners v. Texas Medical Association, No. 18-1223 (Jan. 29, 2021) (footnotes omitted).