Montes v. City of Houston

Justice HECHT,

joined by

To one of its oldest and most beneficent functions — resolving conflicts of law among the courts of appeals — this Court has an inexplicably mulish aversion, preferring instead the resulting confusion in the law, the unfairness to litigants in having the law depend on what court they happen to be in, and the waste of time and money, public and private, in pointless litigation over issues that could readily be resolved. I have noted this aversion and its consequences, 1 and so has the appellate bar, 2 but this case displays the problem yet more vividly. The Fourteenth…