As the Texas Appellate Law blog has noted, the Texas Supreme Court was busy today, releasing “a slew of 13 opinions.” Many of them, on first blush, look interesting. None of them, however, talks about arbitration.
Well, that’s not exactly true. One of the opinions came from a case “almost identical” to last week’s Merrill Lynch arbitration case. The quite short opinion simply states that this week’s Merrill Lynch case is decided just like last week’s was.
Except, though, that this week’s Merrill Lynch case is slightly different from last week’s. In this case, the plaintiff initiated an arbitration proceeding against Merrill Lynch and the broker in his capacity as agent for Merrill Lynch. The plaintiff filed a separate lawsuit against the Merrill Lynch trust company, the entity with whom no arbitration clause existed, and the broker, this time in his capacity as agent for that company. The Court reaches the same result, but it seems to us that this slight variation in the facts highlights the point Justice Hecht made in his dissent in last week’s opinion.
In Re: Merrill Lynch Trust Company, ___ S.W.3d ___ (Tex. 2007) (Cause No. 03-1059)
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