With today’s orders list, the Texas Supreme Court issued opinions in eight cases and set six more for the April argument calendar.

Among today’s cases were the TXI Transportation v. Hughes case about whether testimony about a defendant’s status as an illegal immigrant is harmful error (it is) and two cases about whether a medical-malpractice plaintiff in a so-called “sponge case” can raise an Open Courts challenge to get around time limits (yes to the two-year statute of limitations; no to the ten-year statute of repose). There was also a potentially tricky case for medical-malpractice plaintiffs about which discovery orders extend the 120-day expert-report deadline and which don’t. (You should hope you were very explicit.)

Those opinion summaries are on the way.

Here are the new cases the Court has accepted for its April argument calendar:

Cases set for argument April 14, 2010

• Railroad Commission of Texas v. Texas Citizens for a Safe Future and Clean Water and James G. Popp, No. 08?0497 (docket and briefs)

• Texas Mutual Insurance Co. v. Timothy J. Ruttiger, No. 08?0751 (docket and briefs)

• Italian Cowboy Partners, Ltd., Francesco Secchi and Jane Secchi v. The Prudential Insurance Co. and Four Partners, LLC, No. 08?0989 (docket and briefs)

Cases set for argument April 15, 2010

• TGS-Nopec Geophysical Co. d/b/a TGS-Nopec Corp. v. Susan Combs, Comptroller of Public Accounts and Greg Abbott, No. 08?1056 (docket and briefs)

• Liana Leordeanu v. American Protection Insurance Co., No. 09?0330 (docket and briefs)

• In re Rio Queen Citrus, Inc. and Elmore Stahl, Inc., No. 09-0491 (docket and briefs)