The Texas Supreme Court has issued a Response Request to GTECH (now doing business as IGT) in the Nettles v. GTECH case. What does this mean? It means that at least one Justice wanted to see a response from GTECH before deciding whether to grant or deny Ms. Nettles’ Petition for Review. As a reminder, Ms. Nettles is asking the Supreme Court to review the decision by the Dallas Court of Appeals to grant immunity to GTECH. Ms. Nettles alleges that GTECH exercised independent discretion when it decided to use misleading instructions on the Fun 5’s scratch-off tickets. If the Court had not issued the Response Request, Ms. Nettles’ Petition for Review would have been denied automatically after 31 days. The deadline for GTECH’s response is May 21st.
Is this a good sign for the Steele et al. v. GTECH case? That’s hard to say. It probably is a good sign. If the nine members of the Court all thought that the Dallas Court of Appeals’ opinion was correct, the Court would not have requested a response from GTECH.
Is the Court going to issue a Response Request in the Steele case? No. There’s no need for the Court to do so because GTECH has already announced that it will file a response. The Court has given GTECH until April 27th to do so. As soon as GTECH files its response in the Steele case, we will post it here.
How long will it take the Supreme Court to decide whether to grant or deny Ms. Nettles’ Petition for Review or to grant or deny GTECH’s Petition for Review in the Steele case? That’s hard to predict. For a detailed discussion of the complicated process that the Court follows in deciding whether to grant a Petition for Review, see the Internal Operating Rules of the Supreme Court beginning at page 10.