So begins today’s dissent by Justice Wainwright in In re McAllen Medical Center, Inc, No. 05-0892:

A whole new world

A new fantastic point of view

No one to tell us no

Or where to go

Or say we’re only dreaming . . .

It’s crystal clear

That now I’m in a whole new world with you.

— Brad Kane, A Whole New World, on Aladdin (Disney 1992).

But don’t get too excited. This “whole new world” is “[a] whole new world in mandamus practice” in which arguments about the litigants’ “costs and delay” now can satisfy Texas’s traditional standard that a relator must show that it lacks an adequate remedy by appeal.

Who should be reading this case carefully and thinking about how the more lenient standards for mandamus affect them? Anyone trying perhaps to get mandamus relief to order a trial court to enforce a forum-selection clause in a contract. Or trying to get mandamus relief against a trial court’s temporary conservatorship order. I’m sure there will be no shortage of other affected cases.

I’ll have a full summary in a later post.