The Texas Constitution and the Open Courts Provision
The Texas Constitution's open courts provision ensures that
litigants receive their day in court. Tex. Const. Ann. art. 1,
§ 13
The open courts provision of the Texas Constitution provides that:
All courts shall be open, and every
person for an injury done him, in his lands, goods, person or
reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law.
TEX. CONST. art I, § 13.
The Texas Supreme Court has held that the open courts provision
guarantees that "the right to bring a well-established common
law cause of action cannot be effectively abrogated by the
legislature absent a showing that the legislative basis for the
statute outweighs the denial of the constitutionally-guaranteed
right of redress." More specifically, the Court has held that
a statute's application violates the open courts provision when
it bars a common-law cause of action before the litigant has a
reasonable opportunity to discover the wrong
