A Familiar Knock:

When David Weekley Homes filed an appeal in Texas’ High Court last month, it was as if the builder had entered one of its own custom-built homes.

Since David Weekley’s brother Richard formed Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) to slash businesses’ legal liabilities, the Weekleys have crafted the court in their own anti-tort image. Current justices alone have taken $120,337 from TLR’s PAC ($88,337) and the Weekley family ($32,000).

If justices who took more than $5,000 from the Weekleys and TLR recused themselves from this case, only Justices Harriet O'Neill and Steven Smith could hear it. Instead, justices who spent piles of Weekley campaign cash are expected to vote secretly to review or reject this appeal.

The Weekley case, In RE Weekley Homes, epitomizes the court’s credibility crisis. When judges let private interests fund their campaigns, big donors resurface as parties to cases that are marred from the start. No matter what the justices do, some people will suspect that the court acted to reward a big donor—or to avoid the appearance of doing so.

In a case full of prodigal offspring, the last two Democrats to leave the court resurface here. Raul Gonzalez, now at Locke Liddell & Sapp ($209,317 to current justices), drafted the Weekley brief, which seeks to overturn a ruling that ex-Justice Rose Spector made as a visiting trial court judge.

That ruling affects the Richardson family’s complaint that its $235,807 Weekley home is a toxic, moldy lemon that poisoned the whole family. Judge Spector sent the parents’ claims to building-industry arbitrators (as stipulated in a Weekley contract that the parents signed) but sent the minor kids’ claims to a jury trial.

Now the brothers Weekley return to the court that they built, asking it to impose the arbitration sins of the fathers upon their children. It’s your call, brethren.•