In the November 2024 Edition of Texas Lawbook, Enoch Kever partner, Craig Enoch, was asked to address the changes that the results of the election will bring to the Texas Courts of Appeals. To read the whole article, click here.
In the November 2024 Edition of Texas Lawbook, Enoch Kever partner, Craig Enoch, was asked to address the changes that the results of the election will bring to the Texas Courts of Appeals. To read the whole article, click here.
Enoch Kever congratulates Senior Counsel, 
Jessica Soos, who has been elected to the Council of the Public Utility Law Section of the State Bar of Texas for 2024-26 year term! Jessica looks forward to working with the Council to continue to grow the Section’s membership, assist in organizing educational programming, and further the Section’s impact and encouragement of collegiality among professionals who practice Public Utility Law in Texas.
Enoch Kever Member Amy Prueger, working with the AYLA’s Law-Related Education Committee and fellow presenters Justice Brett Busby, Armin Salek, and Samantha McCoy, presented a lesson to students at Covington Middle School on the structure of Texas courts.
The curriculum is based on three books on judicial civics and court history that were prepared by the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society: Taming Texas: How Law and Order Came to the Lone Star State, Law and the Texas Frontier, and The Chief Justices of Texas. Authors Jim Haley and Marilyn Duncan wrote these books especially for seventh-grade Texas history and social studies students to educate them on the importance of the third branch of government. The lessons are based on stories and illustrations from the books, which are the first of their kind in the country.
Amy Prueger and Elana Einhorn published Diminishing Discretion: The Evolving Landscape of New Trial Standards in the February 2024 edition of News for the Bar, a publication of the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas.
The article investigates how three Texas Supreme Court cases radically changed the jurisprudence on review of a trial court’s grant of a motion for new trial.
Amy Prueger’s Navigating the New Landscape: An Overview of the Texas Business Court is the lead article in the Spring 2024 edition of The Advocate, from the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas. The Spring edition focuses on the new Texas Business Court, which will be open for business on September 1, 2024.
Enoch Kever Members, Amy Prueger and Sara Churchin, joined by Megan LaVoie, Administrative Director for the Texas Office of Court Administration, spoke at the TexasBarCLE’s 47th Annual Course on Advanced Civil Trial on the new Texas courts, specifically the Texas Business Court and the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. These courts will begin hearing cases starting September 1, 2024.
Each year the Texas Bar Foundation honors seven lawyers who have made an outstanding contribution in a particular field. One of the categories is the award for an outstanding appellate lawyer who has demonstrated the highest personal ethics, commitment to the profession, and mentorship of younger lawyers. In a show of terrific and richly deserved recognition, our own Craig Enoch brought home this very prestigious award. Enoch Kever extends our profound congratulations to Craig for this great personal honor and exceptional recognition of his dedication to the firm.
Enoch Kever congratulates member Melissa Lorber on her election to the 2024-25 Travis County Women Lawyers’ Association Board of Directors.
TCWLA, a non-profit focused on fostering communication among women lawyers and strengthening the image and position of women lawyers in the community, stands by three powerful pillars – connections, community, and camaraderie.
Melissa has served on TCWLA’s Board for the past four years and moved into the President-Elect role in June. Enoch Kever is proud of Melissa’s dedication to TCWLA and of all of the ways that our attorneys give back to the greater Austin community.
Enoch Kever continues its growth with the addition of Heather Jones Holmes as Senior Counsel. Heather brings outstanding talent to Enoch Kever’s core appellate/litigation and legislative client services. Heather’s years of experience includes serving as committee counsel to the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee, as professional staff at a Texas Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court, and in private practice meeting needs of commercial and private clients on real estate, commercial lending, and estate matters.
That’s the question the Public Utility Commission of Texas has teed up for consideration in a new rulemaking project, to be launched soon. The PUC Commissioners have many times in the past debated how to best view “merchant” DC Ties—are they like non-controllable generators, delivering power into the ERCOT grid at levels and at times determined by the importing DC Tie owners, without ERCOT input on dispatch or quantity of MWs delivered? Or, are they like transmission lines, which are subject to ERCOT curtailment as necessary to address congestion? Or, are they like load, consuming power at a specific point, and at a level of consumption chosen solely by the load (exporting DC Tie) owner?
And how are their benefits to Texans to be determined? On an economic basis? On a reliability basis? On both bases? Further, with respect to such benefits, should there be a default assumption regarding how much of the DC Tie capability should be considered “deliverable” to the market? For example, should the grid operator strive to ensure “full deliverability” so that 100% of any presumed economic benefits from a DC Tie import are considered always available (or must be made available by the grid operator), even if that deliverability causes congestion or constrains full operation of one or more existing Texas generation units? Similarly, should the Commission consider whether a DC Tie’s hypothetical reliability benefits are always available, or should it delve into the transmission grid modeling regarding reliability impacts in various grid scenarios?
In the past, for example with the Southern Spirit merchant DC Tie project, the Commission evaluated a DC Tie on an ad hoc basis and developed policies in a contested case, requiring further work by ERCOT to implement those policies.
The Commissioners indicated in April that they want a full rulemaking proceeding to consider using a more generic and more “holistic” approach to consideration of DC Ties. Perhaps that approach might provide clarity to DC Tie developers regarding how to evaluate the economics of a possible project.
At the very least, all market participants who might be affected by further development of DC Ties connecting ERCOT to adjoining grids—including generators, retailers, utilities, and potential DC Tie developers—should be attuned to, and consider participating in, the DC Tie rulemaking to ensure full knowledge of, and the ability to potentially influence the Commission’s approach to, the ways that DC Ties might impact ongoing ERCOT power market development.