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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 the Cox School of Business and the Dedman School of Law.

Issue No. 9 Monday, July 13, 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. 9 · Covering June 29–July 13, 2026 · lede

The bench returns — and ExxonMobil is now a Texas company. Two new opinions posted to the court’s official index since our last edition: Thompson v. Anchor Capital GP (2026 Tex. Bus. 41) and Kampmann v. Smith (2026 Tex. Bus. 42), carrying the per-year corpus contiguously through 42. And on July 1, ExxonMobil’s redomiciliation from New Jersey to Texas became effective — through a holding-company merger structure, not the statutory conversion shorthand we and others had been using.

Coverage in this issue: the two new opinions, presented from the court’s official index descriptions pending our full PDF review; the ExxonMobil redomiciliation as effected, pinned to the July 1 EDGAR filings; the dockets-and-hearings posture from the re:SearchTX alert stream, including a jury trial commencing today in the Eighth Division; and the threads we carry forward. This edition covers the full period since Issue No. 8 (June 29). All citations Bluebook 21st; all primary sources hyperlinked.

  • Wk-9Week in review · July 13
  • 2New opinions posted to official index
  • 42Latest 2026 Tex. Bus. citation
  • Jul 1ExxonMobil Texas redomiciliation effective

From the editor

The quiet streak breaks — two opinions, and the largest redomestication on our watch list goes effective.

Welcome to The Hilltop Docket’s Issue No. 9, covering the full period since Issue No. 8 (June 29). The two-week quiet streak we reported last edition has broken: the court’s official opinions index now shows two new entries — 2026 Tex. Bus. 41, a First Division memorandum opinion signed July 1, and 2026 Tex. Bus. 42, a Fourth Division opinion signed July 8. The sequential per-year citations remain contiguous from 2024 Tex. Bus. 1 through 2026 Tex. Bus. 42 with no gaps.

The larger governance story of the period, however, happened on EDGAR rather than at the courthouse: on July 1, ExxonMobil’s move from New Jersey to Texas became effective. The structure matters, and it is not the one our earlier shorthand implied — we detail the holding-company merger mechanics below, pinned to the company’s own July 1 filings. Also in this edition: the docket-and-hearings posture from the re:SearchTX alert stream, including a jury trial that commences in the Eighth Division today, and the items we carry forward — the SWAPA v. Boeing repleading and anti-SLAPP fee practice after Local Marketing.

On the bench

Two new opinions — the corpus advances to 2026 Tex. Bus. 42.

Source status: the treatments below are drawn from the court’s official index descriptions (which the court notes are staff-prepared conveniences, not part of the opinions) together with the docket metadata on the face of each PDF. Our full doctrinal treatment of each opinion — holdings verified line-by-line against the opinion text under our human-review protocol — follows in the next edition.

Thompson v. Anchor Capital GP

2026 Tex. Bus. 41 (1st Div.) (mem. op.) · Whitehill, J. · signed July 1, 2026 · No. 25-BC01B-0038

Per the court’s index description, the opinion holds that a promissory note was a loan, not a security under the Texas Securities Act, applying the four Reves factors — the family-resemblance framework federal and state courts use to distinguish notes that are securities from notes that are ordinary commercial lending.

Why it matters Whether an instrument is a “security” controls whether Texas Securities Act remedies (and their fee-shifting and rescission features) attach to what is otherwise a contract dispute. A Business Court application of the Reves factors gives commercial practitioners a data point on how the court will characterize hybrid financing instruments.

Kampmann v. Smith

2026 Tex. Bus. 42 (4th Div.) · Barnard, J. · signed July 8, 2026 · No. 26-BC04A-0005

Per the court’s index description, the case presents three issues: (i) whether the Business Court has subject-matter jurisdiction over the action; if so, (ii) whether an earlier-filed lawsuit between some of the same parties requires abatement under the doctrine of dominant jurisdiction; and (iii) whether, at the court’s discretion, the case should be transferred to a different county. The index description does not state the disposition of each issue; we will report the holdings after reading the opinion against the record.

Why it matters Jurisdiction and venue mechanics remain the dominant claim family in the Business Court’s written output, and this is a Fourth Division (San Antonio) contribution to that line. Dominant-jurisdiction abatement in particular governs the race between parallel district-court and Business Court proceedings.

Redomestication watch

ExxonMobil’s Texas redomiciliation went effective July 1 — as a holding-company merger, not a conversion.

The effective date we have been watching since the May 27 shareholder vote has arrived. Per the post-effective amendments to the company’s Form S-8 registration statements filed with the SEC on July 1, 2026, the redomiciliation was effectuated on July 1, 2026 by merging Ensign LLC, a Texas limited liability company, with and into Exxon Mobil Corporation (the New Jersey corporation), with Exxon Mobil Corporation surviving as a wholly owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil Holdings Corporation, a Texas corporation. Each outstanding share of the New Jersey company’s common stock was automatically exchanged one-for-one for a share of the Texas holding company’s common stock, and the Texas company is the successor registrant under Exchange Act Rule 12g-3(a). The stock continues to trade on the NYSE as XOM; the CUSIP changed to 30233Q 108. See ExxonMobil Holdings Corp., Post-Effective Amendment No. 1 to Form S-8 (July 1, 2026) (explanatory note); both entities filed Current Reports on Form 8-K on July 1, 2026.

A precision note, and a correction of our own shorthand: prior editions referred to the anticipated “New Jersey→Texas conversion.” The structure actually used is a merger-based holding-company reorganization — shareholders of the New Jersey corporation became shareholders of a newly formed Texas parent, and the New Jersey entity survives beneath it — rather than a statutory conversion of the existing entity. For governance readers, the operative charter is now the Texas parent’s: per the same filing, ExxonMobil Holdings’ amended and restated certificate of formation provides that its directors and officers are not liable to the corporation or its shareholders for damages for breach of any duty owed to the fullest extent permitted by the Texas Business Organizations Code, and its bylaws mandate indemnification to the fullest extent the TBOC permits. We will fold the new charter and bylaws into the Reincorporation Index’s provision-level coding as the exhibits are processed.

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 redomiciliation — a pre-existing employment-discrimination matter that turned on the nature of the claim, not the company’s state of organization.

Dockets & calendar

Hearings of record — June 29 through the week ahead.

The re:SearchTX alert stream remained active through the period. Business Court settings carrying Chapter 25A docket numbers in the filing-activity export included two temporary-injunction hearings — Cotton Equity / Cotton Holdings, Inc. v. Cochran / Knight Roofing (No. 26-BC08A-0016, set July 1) and White v. T2 Investments (No. 26-BC11B-0041, set July 6) — a motion hearing in Eldorado Drilling AS v. Seadrill Limited (No. 25-BC11A-0072, set July 10), and a jury trial commencing today, July 13, in Borchers v. Drusch (No. 25-BC08B-0021, Eighth Division), with settings continuing through the week.

  • Week ahead · July 13–17 (settings from the re:SearchTX export)
  • Jul 13–1625-BC08B-0021Borchers v. Drusch (TrueAero)Jury trial
  • Jul 1525-BC01A-0055Stonebriar Commercial Finance v. WardMotion for summary judgment
  • Jul 1525-BC01B-0045May v. Gilbert May, Inc.Conference
  • Jul 1526-BC08B-0001Hughes v. Hughes (family-entity dispute)Status hearing
  • Jul 1526-BC01B-0010Miller, individually and derivativelyConference
  • Jul 1626-BC01B-0025CWK Management, Inc., individually and derivativelySpecial appearance

In the Fifteenth Court of Appeals — the court that hears Business Court appeals — the alert stream surfaced two new matters this period: Board of Regents of the University of Texas System (No. 15-26-00134-CV, filed June 29) and In re Joseph Beard (No. 15-26-00136-CV, filed June 30). Alert metadata alone does not tell us whether either arises from a Business Court proceeding, so we note them as Fifteenth Court docket events and nothing more.

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, or settings vacated or reset after the export. Where the export omits hearing times, those settings appear on the live monitor as they are published.

Carried forward

The doctrinal threads we are still pulling.

SWAPA’s repleading. SWAPA v. Boeing (2026 Tex. Bus. 37) set a June 19 deadline for SWAPA to amend its inducement-causation pleading. No repleaded petition or renewed dispositive motion has surfaced to us as a verified record, and no further opinion in the matter has posted to the official index. We continue to watch for a signed ruling on any renewed motion.

Anti-SLAPP fee practice after Local Marketing. Whether the mandatory $18,010 fee award in 2026 Tex. Bus. 40, and its “pertaining to” reading of the right to petition, draw further TCPA motions against litigation-adjacent counterclaims in commercial removals. Neither of this period’s two opinions involves the TCPA; nothing new to certify.

Looking ahead

What we are tracking.

Full treatments of Thompson and Kampmann. Line-by-line review of both opinion PDFs under the human-review protocol — including the disposition of each of Kampmann’s three certified questions, which the court’s index description leaves open — in the next edition.

ExxonMobil follow-on filings. The Texas parent’s charter and bylaws exhibits (Form 8-K of July 1), their provision-level coding into the Reincorporation Index, and any further successor-registrant housekeeping on EDGAR.

The Borchers verdict. The Eighth Division jury trial commencing today runs through the week per the export’s settings; a verdict or judgment of record would be among the court’s early jury dispositions we can document.

Issue No. 10 (anticipated, week of July 20). The week’s new opinions, the Thompson and Kampmann full treatments, and the hearings calendar.

How we work

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; errors are corrected at the source with a dated note.

04 / Independence & conflicts

No party may purchase coverage. Conflicts declared in-issue.

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