Texas Lawyer Beats Suspension Over Opponent No-Contact Rule

Texas disciplinary rules don’t expressly bar an attorney representing himself from contacting an opposing party he knows to be represented by counsel, the state supreme court ruled Friday.

Suggesting perhaps an administrative change is coming to prohibit such communications, the justices said the case before them wasn’t the appropriate place to make that change.

“We do not revise our rules by opinion,” Justice Debra Lehrmann wrote for a nearly unanimous court.

The court’s interpretation of the no-contact rule wipes out a five-year suspension a trial court had imposed against licensed attorney William Ruth, which an appeals court had upheld.

Ruth, ...