The Hilltop Docket

On the bench

No new opinion this week; the corpus holds at 2026 Tex. Bus. 40.

As of this issue’s cutoff at noon Central today, the court’s official opinions index shows no opinion posted since our last edition. The most recent entry remains 2026 Tex. Bus. 40 (Local Marketing, Inc. v. Bennett), the anti-SLAPP memorandum opinion signed June 15 and treated in full in Issue No. 7. The sequential per-year citations remain contiguous from 2024 Tex. Bus. 1 through 2026 Tex. Bus. 40 with no gaps and no new citation this period.

A quiet published docket is unremarkable in itself — the bench’s opinion output has come in uneven bursts since the court opened, and a week without a signed opinion does not signal a slowdown in underlying activity, which continues on the dockets and in chambers between published rulings. We note the absence here only to keep the record exact: readers comparing editions should see that the corpus did not advance this week, rather than infer a missed opinion. The companion live monitor, which refreshes every thirty minutes, is the authoritative source for any opinion that posts between editions.

Carried forward

The doctrinal threads we are still pulling.

Anti-SLAPP fee practice after Local Marketing. Last week’s memorandum opinion (2026 Tex. Bus. 40) supplied the Business Court’s first sustained treatment in this digest of the Texas Citizens Participation Act — reading the “exercise of the right to petition” to reach litigation-adjacent communications “pertaining to” a proceeding, requiring “clear and specific evidence” of damages at the prima-facie stage, and awarding the statute’s mandatory attorney’s fees under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.009(a)(1). The open question is practical, not doctrinal: whether that mandatory fee exposure draws further TCPA motions against counterclaims in commercial removals, and whether the counterclaimant amends on any new-harm theory the scheduling order still permits. We will report a renewed motion or an amended pleading when one posts of record; there is nothing new to add this week.

We carry no new statutory or appellate development on the Business Court’s jurisdictional reach this week. The Fifteenth Court of Appeals — which hears appeals from the Business Court — continued to generate routine docket alerts in the stream we monitor, but none that we can verify as a Business Court matter of record from alert metadata alone. Consistent with our source-discipline protocol, we hold those items rather than name them.

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).71.2% reflects votes for ÷ (for + against); including abstentions the figure is ≈70.5% (Form 8-K Item 5.07, acc. 0000034088-26-000078). 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 standing reminder, because the names coincide: the Brown v. Exxon Mobil bench opinion (2026 Tex. Bus. 35) covered in an earlier edition 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 opinion bears on the ExxonMobil conversion.

Dockets & calendar

Filings and hearings — week of June 22–29.

The re:SearchTX alert stream we monitor remained active this week, generating filing, case, and hearing matches across the Business Court and Fifteenth Court of Appeals search profiles. As is typical, 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. A handful of commercial-styled matters surfaced 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 its inducement-causation pleading. That deadline has passed; the repleaded petition and any renewed dispositive motion are docket items, not opinions, and have not surfaced to us as verified records. We continue to watch for a signed ruling on any renewed motion.

Anti-SLAPP fee practice. Whether Local Marketing’s mandatory $18,010 fee award, and its “pertaining to” reading of the right to petition, draw further TCPA motions against litigation-adjacent counterclaims in the Business Court — and whether the counterclaimant amends on any new-harm theory the scheduling order still permits.

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. 9 (anticipated, week of July 6). The week’s new opinions, any verified new petitions, and the hearings calendar.