Texas Appellate Court Upholds In-House Counsel Attorney Immunity in First Business Court Mandamus
In-house counsel practicing in Texas and the companies that employ them have binding appellate confirmation that legal advice tied to corporate personnel decisions is protected by attorney immunity, even if the counsel also performs non-legal work, and plaintiffs cannot avoid this defense by omitting an attorney’s job title from pleadings.
On July 14, 2026, Texas’s Fifteenth Court of Appeals granted a writ of mandamus in favor of a Reynolds & Reynolds general counsel sued for tortious interference over his role in the for-cause termination of the company’s former CEO, marking the first time the new Texas Business Court has had a mandamus petition granted on the merits. The court held that attorney immunity applies to in-house counsel for legal advice tied to corporate personnel decisions, even if the counsel also performs non-legal business tasks, and that plaintiffs cannot circumvent this defense by amending pleadings to omit the attorney’s job title. In-house counsel and their employers facing similar tort claims in Texas can cite this binding precedent to seek early dismissal of suits tied to protected legal work.