“Hard Cases” and TRCP 683

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting from an early Sherman Act case, famously observed: “Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance… but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.” Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904).

Yet in the context of temporary injunctions and TROs, there are only “hard cases,” because of the demanding requirements about proof of irreparable injury, etc. For example, the most recent statement from the Texas Supreme Court about the specificity required by Tex. R. Civ. P. 683 is In re: Luther, 620 S.W.3d 715, 722-23 (Tex. 2021) (orig. proceeding)–an extremely charged case politically, arising in one of the most challenging periods of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that vein is the panel majority in In re Childrens Medical Center of Dallas, a dispute about care for transgender youth, which found this order sufficiently specific as to Rule 683’s requirements about harm. A dissent saw otherwise. No. 05-22-00459-CV (May 18, 2022) (mem. op.).