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SMU Corporate Governance Initiative

The Hilltop Docket

Intelligence on the Texas Business Court — opinions, dockets, hearings, doctrine. A research publication of the SMU Corporate Governance Initiative at Cox & Dedman.

Issue No. 6 Monday, June 15, 2026 Week in Review

Editorial Independence The Hilltop Docket has no financial, advisory, or other relationship with any litigant before the Texas Business Court, or with re:SearchTX or its parent. Interpretations are the authors' own and do not represent the positions of SMU, the Cox School, or the Dedman School. Any future conflict will be disclosed on Page One.

Issue No. 6 · Week of June 8–15, 2026 · lede

A denial week on the bench: three new memorandum opinions are now confirmed on the court’s official index — 2026 Tex. Bus. 37 through 39 — and each denied the moving party. Two refused to decide on the papers what belongs to the factfinder — Boeing’s motion for summary judgment in the 737 MAX/SWAPA suit, and cross-motions over a “relocate to Dallas” employment term — while the third denied a remand on four independent grounds, reaffirming whole-action jurisdiction under Chapter 25A.

Coverage in this issue: full bench treatments of the three newly confirmed opinions; a doctrinal note on the court’s reluctance to resolve fact-laden questions as a matter of law; the dockets-and-calendar posture; and an ExxonMobil redomestication status check. All citations Bluebook 21st; all primary sources hyperlinked and read against the underlying opinion PDFs.

  • Wk-6Week in review · as of noon Central, June 15, 2026
  • 3New opinions confirmed on official index
  • 37–392026 Tex. Bus. citations added
  • 3 / 3Moving party denied

From the editor

A week of denials — the court declines to decide on the papers what belongs to the jury.

Welcome to The Hilltop Docket’s Issue No. 6. Since our last Week-in-Review, three new opinions have posted to the court’s official opinions index — 2026 Tex. Bus. 37, 38, and 39, all memorandum opinions. As of this issue’s cutoff at noon Central today, the corpus runs contiguously through 2026 Tex. Bus. 39, signed June 11, with no gaps. The connective thread this week is unusual: each of the three denied the party that moved.

Two of the denials are merits rulings that decline to take a question away from the factfinder. In Southwest Airlines Pilots Association v. The Boeing Company, the First Division denied Boeing’s motion for summary judgment without prejudice, holding that the federal 737 MAX dismissals Boeing relied on turn on a stricter federal pleading standard, and that under Texas fair-notice pleading a plaintiff with a deficient claim must be allowed to replead. In Lunderby v. Dominium, the same division denied both cross-motions, holding that the employment-agreement obligation to “relocate to Dallas” means more than reporting to work and lasts the life of the contract — but, lacking any objective criterion for what relocation requires, is ambiguous and therefore a fact question for the jury. The third, South Shore ER v. Bashiri, is a jurisdictional opinion: the Eleventh Division denied a motion to remand on four independent grounds and, citing Reed v. Rook TX, LP, 2025 Tex. Bus. 23, ¶¶ 10, 24–25, 718 S.W.3d 270, 275–76, 280–81 (3d Div.), reaffirmed that once original jurisdiction attaches under § 25A.004 it reaches the whole “action,” not a claim-by-claim slice. We treat all three opinions, the dockets-and-calendar posture, and the ExxonMobil redomestication status below.

On the bench

Three opinions, now confirmed: 2026 Tex. Bus. 37–39.

All three entries below have been read against their underlying opinion PDFs on the court’s official opinions index, where each is styled a memorandum opinion. The sequential per-year citations remain contiguous from 2024 Tex. Bus. 1 through 2026 Tex. Bus. 39 with no gaps. Two of the three issued from the First Division (Bouressa, J.) on June 9; the third issued from the Eleventh Division (Stagner, J., of the Eighth Division, sitting by assignment in the Eleventh) on June 11.

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association v. The Boeing Company — Boeing’s motion for summary judgment denied; plaintiff may replead.

2026 Tex. Bus. 37 (mem. op.); First Division; Bouressa, J.; signed June 9, 2026; cause 25-BC01A-0040. Ruling: Boeing’s motion for summary judgment DENIED without prejudice; leave to replead. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) alleges that Boeing’s misrepresentations about the 737 MAX induced SWAPA and its members into a disadvantageous 2016 collective-bargaining agreement to fly the aircraft. Boeing moved for summary judgment — framed as a no-evidence/summary-judgment-on-the-pleadings motion under the standard discussed in W. Orange-Cove (¶ 2) — arguing SWAPA cannot establish proximate causation and pointing to the Illinois federal 737 MAX flight-crew suits dismissed on the pleadings. The court held those federal cases distinguishable: because federal pleading demands greater specificity, a federal court may infer that facts absent from a complaint do not exist, but Texas fair-notice pleading permits no such presumption — and a Texas plaintiff with a deficient claim must generally be allowed to replead before suffering an adverse judgment. SWAPA’s pleaded inducement theory is, in any event, distinct from the “design-defect/grounding/lost-wages” theory the federal courts found too attenuated. Although the causation pleading is deficient as written, the motion is denied without prejudice and SWAPA must amend by June 19, 2026.

Lunderby v. Dominium Development and Acquisition — both cross-motions denied; “relocate to Dallas” is ambiguous and a jury question.

2026 Tex. Bus. 38 (mem. op.); First Division; Bouressa, J.; signed June 9, 2026; cause 25-BC01A-0061. Ruling: plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment DENIED; defendant’s Rule 166(g) motion to construe DENIED. The cross-motions asked the court to construe, as a matter of law, the employment-agreement obligation that Ryan Lunderby “relocate to Dallas.” Reading the agreement as a whole, the court held the obligation means more than merely reporting to work in Dallas and endures for the life of the contract — otherwise the relocation incentives would be meaningless — but the agreement supplies no objective criterion for what relocation requires. The term is therefore ambiguous, and its application a fact question for the jury, particularly given evidence that Lunderby’s family moved to Minnesota while he leased an Irving apartment. The court observed that only Lunderby (not his spouse or child) bore the contractual relocation obligation, but no claim had been pleaded against the family. Both motions denied.

South Shore ER v. Bashiri — motion to remand denied on four independent grounds; whole-action jurisdiction reaffirmed.

2026 Tex. Bus. 39 (mem. op.); Eleventh Division; Stagner, J. (sitting by assignment); signed June 11, 2026; cause 26-BC11A-0039. Ruling: plaintiff’s motion to remand DENIED. In a dispute among members of an emergency-medicine LLC, the court denied remand on four independent grounds: (i) the venue-selection clause in the company agreement is unenforceable because the agreement is not a “major transaction” under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 15.020 — it states no aggregate value of consideration on its face, and contingent or aggregated member contributions do not meet the threshold; (ii) alternatively, the Eleventh Division is statutorily “located in” Galveston County under § 25A.017(d), so removal offends no venue clause; (iii) removal was timely because the 30-day clock under § 25A.006(f) ran from the plaintiff’s $16 million expert report (served March 23, 2026), not from earlier pleadings alleging $1.84 million; and (iv) all of the plaintiff’s claims fall within the court’s original jurisdiction under § 25A.004, so supplemental jurisdiction is inapplicable. Rejecting an “atomized,” claim-by-claim approach, the court applied Reed, holding that “action” means the whole proceeding once original jurisdiction attaches.

Doctrinal note

When not to decide — the limits of a ruling on the papers.

The two merits denials this week share a posture: each refuses to resolve, as a matter of law, a question the court regards as belonging to the factfinder. In SWAPA v. Boeing, the lesson is jurisdictional in the procedural sense — the court declines to import a federal-court disposition wholesale, because the federal 737 MAX dismissals rest on a heightened pleading standard and an inference (that facts omitted from a complaint do not exist) that Texas fair-notice pleading does not allow. The corollary is the right to replead: a deficient Texas pleading is generally cured by amendment, not ended by judgment. In Lunderby, the court does construe the contract as far as the text allows — the duty to “relocate” means more than commuting and lasts the life of the agreement — but stops at the point the words run out. With no objective criterion for what relocation requires, the term is ambiguous, and ambiguity sends the question to the jury rather than to summary judgment.

South Shore ER points the other way on the threshold question, and is the week’s most consequential opinion for jurisdictional practice. Denying remand on four independent grounds, the court reaffirms Reed v. Rook’s whole-action approach: once original jurisdiction attaches under § 25A.004, it reaches the entire proceeding, and a plaintiff cannot defeat removal by atomizing the suit into individual claims. The opinion also supplies working definitions practitioners will reuse — that a “major transaction” under § 15.020 requires an aggregate value stated on the face of the agreement, that the § 25A.006(f) removal clock runs from the point the >$5 million amount in controversy becomes ascertainable, and that a division is “located in” every county within its geographic boundaries. Read together with the two merits denials, the week reflects a single posture across the three opinions: the court denied remand on jurisdictional grounds and denied two merits motions on factfinder grounds.

Redomestication watch

ExxonMobil’s move to Texas — status check.

ExxonMobil’s May 27 shareholder vote approved the change of incorporation from New Jersey to Texas (roughly 71.2% of votes cast in favor, per the company’s Form 8-K under Item 5.07).† We continue to watch for the effective date of the conversion and any follow-on charter or governance filings as they land on EDGAR; we have nothing new to certify on that front this week.

A reminder, because the names coincide: the prior issue’s Brown v. Exxon Mobil bench opinion (2026 Tex. Bus. 35) is unrelated to the redomestication — a pre-existing employment-discrimination matter that turned on the nature of the claim, not the company’s state of organization. Nothing in this week’s three opinions bears on the ExxonMobil conversion.

† 71.2% reflects votes for ÷ (for + against); including abstentions the figure is ≈ 70.5% (Form 8-K Item 5.07, acc. 0000034088-26-000078).

Dockets & calendar

Filings and hearings — week of June 8–15.

The re:SearchTX alert stream we monitor was active this week, generating filing, case, and hearing matches across the Business Court and Fifteenth Court of Appeals search profiles. The bulk of the volume reflects appellate and criminal matters that fall outside the Business Court’s civil jurisdiction; we do not report those as Business Court docketing. Several commercial-styled matters did surface in the feed, but the alert metadata alone does not establish that a given matter is a Chapter 25A Business Court proceeding, and re:SearchTX’s underlying case and filing records are login-gated. Consistent with our source-discipline protocol, we hold those items for verification before treating them as Business Court filings rather than naming them here.

For real-time docket activity and the hearings calendar, the live monitor is the authoritative source between editions and refreshes every thirty minutes — see the Cases tab and the Hearings tab.

Docket numbers and hearing settings are drawn from re:SearchTX’s filing-activity export and may not capture matters set on internal calendars that have not yet generated public alerts. Where the court’s export omits hearing times, those settings appear on the live monitor as they are published.

Looking ahead

What we are tracking.

SWAPA’s repleading. SWAPA v. Boeing (2026 Tex. Bus. 37) set a June 19 deadline for SWAPA to amend; we are watching for the repleaded petition and any renewed dispositive motion testing the inducement-causation theory.

Whole-action jurisdiction. Whether South Shore ER’s four-ground remand denial — and its reaffirmation of Reed v. Rook against an “atomized” claim-by-claim reading — is followed in the next round of removal contests, particularly its § 15.020 “major transaction” and § 25A.006(f) removal-clock holdings.

ExxonMobil. The effective date of the New Jersey→Texas conversion and any follow-on charter or governance filings, surfaced to the monitor as they land on EDGAR.

Issue No. 7 (anticipated, week of June 22). The week’s new opinions, any verified new petitions, and the hearings calendar.

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Editorial standards.

We borrow the disciplines that make Delaware-side reporting trustworthy: primary sources, human review, declared conflicts, and a refusal to take paid placement on coverage.

01 / Primary sources

Court text, dockets, filings of record.

Opinions are pulled from txcourts.gov/businesscourt; dockets from re:SearchTX; statutes from capitol.texas.gov. Practitioner blogs may appear in scholarship cites but are never load-bearing.

02 / Bluebook 21st

Citation discipline on every entry.

Per-opinion entries follow Bluebook 21st short-form conventions; sequential per-year citations are preserved (e.g., 2026 Tex. Bus. 29 follows 28).

03 / Human review

Every opinion summary read by a human editor.

AI assists with first-pass extraction. Every published characterization is read against the underlying opinion PDF; mischaracterizations are corrected at the source with a dated note.

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SMU CGI is funded institutionally. The Hilltop Docket accepts no paid placement and declares conflicts in the closing section of each issue. Editorial policy.