Petitioners' Brief on the Merits - Supreme Court of Texas

Schedule B precluded the debtor from pursuing that claim.
Such a ruling
ultimately prevents the bankruptcy creditors from accessing a significant
bankruptcy asset due to a hyper-technical application of the otherwise equitable
doctrine of judicial estoppel.
A. Standard for Judicial Estoppel.
In analyzing the application of judicial estoppel in the bankruptcy context,
while this Court may certainly “draw upon the precedents of the Fifth Circuit, or
any other federal or state court, in determining the appropriate federal rule of
decision, [Texas courts] are obligated to follow only higher Texas courts and the
United States Supreme Court.” Penrod Drilling Corp. v. Williams, 868 S.W.2d
294, 296 (Tex. 1993); see also Mohamed v. Exxon Corp., 796 S.W.2d 751, 753-54
(Tex. App.—Houston [14 th Dist.] 1990, writ denied) (acknowledging that the court
of appeals is not bound by Fifth Circuit precedent on matters of federal law and
that the court of appeals reading of federal law could diverge from that of the Fifth
Circuit in a given case). In Penrod, this Court noted that the court of appeals’
reliance on Fifth Circuit precedent overlooked the weight of intervening federal
court decisions from other jurisdictions. Penrod, 868 S.W.2d at 296. Therefore,
in addition to Fifth Circuit cases, this Court may consider other federal cases
outside the Fifth Circuit for a thorough analysis of the application of judicial
estoppel in the present case.
When a party assumes a certain position in a legal proceeding, and succeeds
in maintaining that position, the party may not thereafter assume a contrary
PETITIONERS’ BRIEF ON THE MERITS 8