Municode, Online Library

Municode is by far the most thorough source for municipal codes. It contains the full text of codes for dozens of Texas cities, large and small.  Most of these codes appear to be up-to-date.

American Legal Publishing: Texas

American Legal Publishing also provides the full text of several codes, though this list is not as thorough as Municode. Most of the codes are from cities in north Texas.

Chapter 7 also refers to the LexisNexis Municipal Codes Web Library, but this only contains the code from one Texas city (El Paso).

4 Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms § 74:4 (Lawyers Coop. Publ’g ed., 2d ed. 1993).

To say the least, this citation form is fraught with problems, including:

(1) The title page of the books says Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms Second Edition, and the book’s preface says the same thing. However, the book’s cover says Texas Forms: Pleading and Practice, Second Edition, which is consistent with a similar title by the same publisher—Texas Forms: Legal and Business. This is one instance were a “Cite this authority” section might be helpful, but there is no such section.

Rule 15.3 of the Bluebook indicates to use the “full main title as it appears on the title page,” and one can probably assume this means the title page inside the front cover. Here’s the problem, though: How many library users would think to check the inside cover of a book to make sure that the book with a cover title of Texas Forms: Pleading and Practice is actually Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms Second Edition?

From experience, I can tell you not many.

(2) Thomson Corporation purchased Lawyers Cooperative Publishing in 1989, and Thomson integrated Lawyers Cooperative Publishing into Thomson Legal Publishing in 1995. The following year, Thomson purchased West Publishing Co., and since that time, Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms Second Edition, also possibly known as Texas Forms: Pleading and Practice, Second Edition, has been published under the West name (West Group, Thomson/West, and so forth).

Accordingly, the editor’s name used in rule 18.4 is wrong for those citing to the current edition.

(3) Even with the proper publisher included– Thomson/West– nowhere does the source list the publisher as the editor. The volumes generally list individuals who serve as authors and editors in the introductory matter, so it would make more sense to refer to those individuals (if anyone) under Bluebook Rule 15.2 than it would to refer to the publisher as the editor.

The only other example in Chapter 18 of the Greenbook that refers to a publisher as an editor is the first example in Rule 18.4. The citation:

Beth Steele, Texas Forms § 11:76 (Bancroft-Whitney ed., Supp. 1995).

Bancroft-Whitney is yet another publisher that was purchased by Thomson during the 1990s, and it turns out that the successor to the book cited on the bottom of page 87 is Texas Forms: Legal and Business, which now looks nearly identical to Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms Second Edition, also possibly known as Texas Forms: Pleading and Practice, Second Edition. This is referred to as clarity.

Anyway, the final problem here is: why would anyone cite to a form book in the first place? No reported Texas case has ever cited to either Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms Second Edition or Texas Forms: Pleading and Practice, Second Edition. There is one citation in a Texas law review to this source in a student comment. The student (or law review staff, whatever the case may be), cited the source as:

5 Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms § 90:15 (2d ed. 2004)

For brievity sake, I won’t include the full cite, but the citation to the article is at 39 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 423, 450 n.299.

Epilogue

I think the Texas Tech citation version is better, though I still don’t understand Thomson/West’s practice of renaming the title page but not the actual book. The publisher sells the book online under the name Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice.  However, the database description for the same book in electronic form is Texas Forms Pleading and Practice. It’s just strange.

The Greenbook is designed to supplement The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. The rules in the Greenbook are unique to sources of state law, and where the two sources conflict, users should apply the specific rules in the Greenbook for proper citation rather than the general rules contained in the Bluebook. For example, Chapter Four of the current edition of the Greenbook covers citations to cases decided by the Texas courts of appeals. Although part of the form of a citation to a Texas court of appeals decision should follow the general Bluebook rules (e.g., the case name), the Greenbook requires inclusion of information in the parenthetical that would not be required under the Bluebook.

To further illustrate, consider this citation as it appears in Bluebook form:

Motiva Enters., L.L.C. v. McCrabb, 248 S.W.3d 211 (Tex. App. 2007).

The Greenbook does not control the form of case names or reporter information, so much of this citation remains the same when using the Greenbook form. However, the information contained in the parenthetical would need to be expanded to include the city (Greenbook Rule 4.3) and any petition history (Greenbook Rule 4.4.1). Thus, the proper citation form under the Greenbook should appear as follows:

Motiva Enters., L.L.C. v. McCrabb, 248 S.W.3d 211 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2007, pet. denied).

It is not only common practice to use the Greenbook to cite Texas state legal materials, but it is also required by the local rules for the Eighth District Court of Appeals (Rule 38.1) and the Thirteenth District Court of Appeals.

The newest edition of the Greenbook, published in 2006, updated many of the examples used in the text from the prior edition. However, some examples remain dated. For instance, the sample citation to Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms in Rule 18.4 (p. 88) refers to the publisher as Lawyers Cooperative Publishing (abbreviated as Lawyers Coop. Publ’g) as the editor. This publisher was purchased by Thomson West in 1989, and Texas Jurisprudence Pleading and Practice Forms has been published under the name of West (i.e., West Group, Thomson West) for some time. Greenbook users should thus take caution when referring to an example in the Greenbook to be sure that the example being used still contains accurate information.