Judges go abroad to sell Texas’ new business court system<\/a><\/p>\nDuring one hearing observed by\u00a0The News, Whitehill demonstrated less the statue of Antonin Scalia and more the firmness of a teacher who asks questions he knows\u00a0you know the answer to. When the roundtable of lawyers tries to stand up and greet him in a way befitting the title \u201cYour Honor,\u201d he tells them to stay seated. Dialogue flows naturally between parties, or as naturally as a court could allow\u00a0anyway: \u201cDeadline\u2019s\u00a0up to you,\u201d Whitehill tells them, \u201cYou know\u00a0your cases better than I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has little patience for wasting time. After rattling off a list of prospective trial dates sans the year, he tacks on that they\u2019re all in 2027. \u201cNo 2028, 2029, none of that foolishness,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Judge Bill Whitehill describes the Texas Business Court in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026.<\/p>\n
Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try very hard to squeeze as much cost and time out of the process as possible. I think the way we handle discovery in a big case can save the parties millions of dollars, and most of the time, the vast majority of the time, the lawyers get it,\u201d Whitehill said. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear me say, I don\u2019t believe in discovery motions. Usually, they\u2019re not necessary if people will actually talk to each other, and if that doesn\u2019t work, just call [court manager] Susan [Fox-Bowen], and we\u2019ll have a conference in less than 24 hours. That works the vast majority of the time.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs a result of the way we handle the preliminary scheduling conference, I\u2019ve had at least two cases where the parties left and settled the case, and so if that\u2019s happening, then I\u2019m doing my job. It\u2019s my job to help parties solve their problems, not to be a hard-nosed judge,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whitehill decorated the space himself, a physical monument to the freedom Texas Business Court judges are given to lead their venues. Whitehill\u2019s court is all warm wood and Southwestern Americana, scattered with things meaningful to him and his career. A file cabinet he and his wife bought when he started law school, a whiskey bottle from his grandfather, mementos from when his son lived in Italy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Golden Gloves trophy came from an old client.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in 1988, I got slugged in a deposition, and my client thought it was so funny, he had that little trophy made up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one thing in here that seems to generate the most emotive response is the briefcase. That was my dad\u2019s,\u201d Whitehill said. \u201cHe came home from work every day and set it down and changed clothes, and we\u2019d go throw the football, go throw the baseball, or wrestle, so I pick that up and leave that there because I see it every day; it reminds me of my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Related story: Judges go abroad to sell Texas’ new business court system<\/p>\n
Juan Figueroa, The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
Whitehill has a philosophy for everything, from hand-tied bow-ties\u00a0\u2014 they can\u2019t be too neat lest people think they\u2019re machine tied\u00a0\u2014 to the guiding principle that he\u2019s not here to make laws but implement existing law to make \u201ccorrect\u201d not \u201cright\u201d decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI will do whatever I can, within the law, obviously, to help people resolve their problems efficiently. Their time and money will be better spent going about their business than fighting a lawsuit,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter a combined 40-plus years of private practice and being on the Court of Appeals, there won\u2019t be a kind of case that will come before me that I didn\u2019t have. I know how cases get derailed and delayed and overly expensive, and so I\u2019m trying to avoid those traps and pitfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judge Bill Whitehill poses for a photo in the Texas Business Court in Dallas. Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28,88337,92331,90464],"class_list":["post-412167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-texas-legislature","tag-tp-courts","tag-tp-greg-abbott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}