Gray v. Skelton

• Citation: 595 S.W.3d 633
• Decision Date: 21 February 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-0386,18-0386
• Parties: Guy James GRAY, Petitioner, v. Patricia SKELTON, Respondent
• Court: Supreme Court of Texas

595 S.W.3d 633

Guy James GRAY, Petitioner,

v.Patricia SKELTON, Respondent

No. 18-0386

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued September 26, 2019

OPINION DELIVERED: February 21, 2020

Jane M.N. Webre, Kimberly Gustafson Bueno, Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP, Austin, for Petitioner.

Leslie S. Hyman, Matthew J. McGowan, Ryan C. Reed, Sarah Jackson Donahue, Pulman, Cappuccio, Pullen, LLP, San Antonio, for Respondent.

Jason Everett Boatright, Cantey Hanger LLP, Dallas, for Amicus Curiae pro se.

Coyt (Randy) R. Johnston, Pulman, Cappuccio, Pullen, LLP, San Antonio, for Amicus Curiae pro se.

Robert Earl Henneke, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Austin, for Amicus Curiae The Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Richard Gardner Wilson, Kerr Wilson, P.C., Houston, for Amicus Curiae pro se.

Justice Devine delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Guzman, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Boyd, and Justice Busby joined.

In Peeler v. Hughes & Luce , a plurality of this Court concluded that a client could not sue her criminal-defense attorney for malpractice so long as she stood convicted of the underlying crime. 909 S.W.2d 494, 497–98 (Tex. 1995). The plurality reasoned that, until the conviction is overturned, "it is the illegal conduct [of the convict,] rather than the negligence of a convict's counsel[,] that is the cause in fact of any injuries flowing from the conviction." Id. at 498. Accordingly, "plaintiffs who have been convicted of a criminal offense may negate the sole proximate cause bar to their claim for legal malpractice in connection with that conviction only if they have been exonerated on direct appeal, through post-conviction relief, or otherwise." Id. at 497–98 (emphasis added). The primary dispute in this case is over Peeler 's exoneration requirement.

The client here sued her criminal-defense attorney for malpractice after having her conviction vacated on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. The trial court dismissed the client's legal-malpractice claim as baseless under Peeler . But the court of appeals reversed and remanded, concluding that Peeler did not bar the client's claim. 547 S.W.3d 272 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2018). We agree that Peeler does not bar the client's malpractice claim and accordingly affirm the court of appeals' judgment.

I

Attorney Patricia Skelton was charged with forging a deceased client's will. See TEX. PEN. CODE § 32.21(b). The charges related to a will Skelton drafted for Ysidro Canales, who died about a year after the will's execution. Although Canales retained the signed original, his family could not find his will after his death. Skelton, however, had a copy in her files. Unfortunately, her copy of Canales's will was water-damaged from a rainstorm that partially flooded her law office.

Skelton still had an electronic copy of Canales's will on her computer's hard drive, however, from which she printed a clean copy. The print out, of course, did not contain the signatures of Canales or his witnesses. Believing that she could not probate the will without the signatures, Skelton cut the signatures off the water-damaged copy of the will and pasted them onto the new print out. Skelton then filed this cut-and-paste version of Canales's will with the probate court, not disclosing to the court what she had done. Soon thereafter, Skelton's administrative assistant informed law enforcement that she suspected Skelton of creating a false will, and after further investigation, Skelton was indicted for forging Canales's will.

Skelton pleaded not guilty to the charge and hired Guy Gray, a criminal-defense attorney. After she was convicted of forgery in December 2007, Skelton replaced Gray with new counsel for the appeal. The new attorneys argued, among other things, that Gray rendered ineffective assistance of counsel. The court of appeals affirmed her conviction, finding the record insufficient to hold Gray's counsel ineffective under the Sixth Amendment. Skelton v. State , No. 04-08-00720-CR, 2010 WL 2298859 (Tex. App.—San Antonio June 9, 2010, pet. ref'd) (mem. op.). The Court of Criminal Appeals subsequently refused Skelton's petition for review.

Meanwhile, some of Canales's relatives filed a will contest in the probate court. There, the jury found that (1) Canales executed a valid will; (2) Skelton did not act with the intent to defraud or harm another when she physically altered the will; and (3) the will submitted to probate was an accurate copy of Canales's will. After these findings in the will contest, Skelton filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court. In her habeas application, Skelton renewed her ineffective-assistance argument and also claimed she was actually innocent based on the jury findings in the will contest. The district court denied the writ. The court of appeals, however, reversed the district court's denial and granted Skelton habeas relief. Although the court of appeals did not consider whether Skelton was actually innocent of forgery, it agreed with Skelton that, under the Sixth Amendment's standard for deficient legal representation set forth in Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), Gray's counsel constituted ineffective assistance. Ex parte Skelton , 434 S.W.3d 709, 730–33 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2014, pet. ref'd). On this ground, the court of appeals vacated Skelton's conviction. Id. at 734. The State subsequently elected to dismiss Skelton's criminal charges.

About a year later, Skelton sued Gray for malpractice. Gray moved to dismiss her claim under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 91a, arguing that Skelton was not "exonerated" under the Peeler doctrine and further that the two-year statute of limitations barred her claim. The trial court granted Gray's motion, concluding that the Peeler doctrine barred Skelton's malpractice claim because she had failed to prove her exoneration. The court of appeals reversed, holding that because Skelton's conviction had been vacated, the Peeler doctrine did not apply. 547 S.W.3d at 277. The appellate court also considered a statute-of-limitations issue the trial court did not reach because of its application of Peeler . As to that issue, the court of appeals concluded that Skelton's malpractice suit was timely filed because the limitations period was tolled until Skelton obtained habeas relief. Id. at 278–79.

We granted Gray's petition for review to consider the meaning of "exonerated" under Peeler and Peeler 's interaction with equitable-tolling principles under Hughes v. Mahaney & Higgins , 821 S.W.2d 154 (Tex. 1991).

II

Gray argues that Peeler bars a convicted criminal defendant from bringing a legal-malpractice claim against her former defense counsel unless and until she is exonerated. He submits further that "exoneration" under Peeler requires not only the vacatur of the underlying criminal conviction but also a determination of the formerly convicted person's actual innocence. Gray then concludes that because the habeas proceeding here did not also determine Skelton's innocence, Skelton cannot sue him for his alleged malpractice.

Skelton responds that Peeler does not bar her malpractice claim because she is no longer a convicted criminal. Alternatively, if Peeler does apply, Skelton maintains that she has nevertheless been exonerated by the appellate court's decision to vacate her conviction, the State's decision to dismiss all charges, and the jury's determination in the will contest case that she did not commit fraud. In fact, Skelton submits she must be presumed innocent now that an appellate court has vacated her previous conviction.

In Peeler , Carol Peeler was indicted by a federal grand jury on twenty-one counts after being suspected of engineering illegal tax write-offs. 909 S.W.2d at 495–96. Peeler hired Darrell Jordan, a partner with Hughes & Luce, LLP, to represent her. Id. at 496. While under Jordan's advisement, Peeler signed a plea agreement admitting guilt to one count of aiding and assisting the filing of a false and fraudulent tax return. Id. In exchange, the government dropped the balance of the charges against her, recommending a relatively short prison sentence. Id. Peeler was eventually ordered to serve five years of probation, with a fine of $100,000 and $150,000 in restitution. Id.

Peeler later sued Jordan, alleging that before she pleaded guilty, Jordan knew but failed to tell her that the government had offered her absolute transactional immunity if she testified against her colleagues. Id. Peeler thus sued Jordan for legal malpractice. In the trial court, Jordan and his firm, Hughes & Luce, moved for summary judgment, arguing that Peeler's own conduct proximately caused her damages. Id. On this ground, the trial court granted summary judgment, and the court of appeals affirmed. Id. Thus, in Peeler , the question before this Court was whether a convicted criminal could sue her criminal-defense attorney for malpractice. A plurality held that, with one important qualification, a convict could not.

Under the now so-called Peeler doctrine, convicts may not sue their criminal-defense attorneys for malpractice unless "they have been exonerated on direct appeal, through post-conviction relief, or otherwise." Id. at 498. This is so, the Peeler plurality explained, because "allowing civil recovery for convicts impermissibly shifts responsibility for the crime away from the convict." Id. Without this rule, malpractice claims brought by convicted criminals would "drastically diminish[ ] the consequences of the convicts' criminal conduct and seriously undermine[ ] our system of criminal justice." Id. And as the plurality also noted, permitting a convicted criminal to recover damages through a legal-malpractice claim would allow that criminal "to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found a claim upon his iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime." Id. at 497 (quoting State ex rel. O'Blennis v....