In today’s order list, the Texas Supreme Court issued opinions in 11 cases and set three new petitions for its argument calendar this fall.

I am presuming this was the year-end order list. Technically, the Court has until Monday to issue its final opinions for the state fiscal year (the calendar used to track its statistics). Today’s list is a little shorter than last year’s, in which the Court issued opinions in 18 cases. But that may just reflect the smaller pool of pending cases after the Court’s abbreviated argument calendar this spring. Or it could just be par for the course — in 2007, the Court’s end-of-August order list decided 13 cases.

Me? I think 11 cases is plenty to digest and blog about on a Friday morning. Because of the length of today’s orders, my opinion summaries will follow in a separate post.

This Morning’s Three New Grants

• Bennett v. Reynolds, No. 08-0074 (DocketDB) [set for argument December 15th]. This case asks the Texas Supreme Court to reverse an award of exemplary damages that the petition says exceed constitutional due-process limits, as described in the U.S. Supreme Court’s BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore decision.

• State of Texas v. Brownlow, No. 08-0551 (DocketDB) [set for argument December 16th]. This petition asks if a landowner can recover damages from the state for dirt removed to build a road. As the petition presents it, the dirt was removed from land already subject to a roadway easement.

• Travis Central Appraisal District v. Norman, No. 09-0100 (DocketDB) [set for argument December 16th] This petition asks if local government agencies have immunity from suits brought under Chapter 451 of the Labor Code (governing certain retaliation claims) if the plaintiffs do not first exhaust their administrative remedies within the agency.