The Houston Press recently ran a piece chronicling the ongoing saga of the red-light cameras that’s unfolding in Houston, Texas.
For those unfamiliar, Houston entered into a five-year contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) in 2006, with ATS agreeing to provide red-light cameras and associated services to the city. However, 52% of Houston voters approved a ballot measure in November 2010 to turn the cameras off, before the contract termination date. ATS has claimed total losses of nearly $25 million if the cameras remain off, according to Mandy Oaklander’s Press article.
As any O’Connor’s user would expect, litigation ensued.
The city filed suit requesting a declaratory judgment concerning its contractual obligations to ATS in light of the voting results. The Press article devotes several lines to the city’s decision on whether to file its suit in state or federal court. “Frankly,” city attorney David Feldman is quoted as saying, “we felt given the highly politicized nature of the issue that we would be better off bringing the action in federal court.” The case is still pending in front of U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, who ruled in July that the ballot measure was invalid. According to the Chronicle story by Chris Moran and James Pinkerton, Judge Hughes invalidated the election results because the petition drive to get the measure on the ballot did not comply with the requirements of the city charter.
Regardless of whether you are practicing in state or federal court in Texas, Jones McClure Publishing has you covered. O’Connor’s Texas Rules * Civil Trials (2011) is full of information about pretrial and trial procedure in Texas state court, and O’Connor’s Federal Rules * Civil Trials (2011) can answer your questions about federal court procedure. Check out their companion forms books, O’Connor’s Texas Civil Forms (2011) and O’Connor’s Federal Civil Forms (2011), for easy-to-use, plain-English forms for pleadings and motion practice.
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