Legal Smackdown Avoided

I always take a look at opinions issued by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals, but I rarely read their civil case opinions since I don't practice in that area. For some reason, I clicked on one this morning because the trial court had been reversed.

Pretty boring stuff. A guy gets hurt. A guy sues. There is a trial. After the injured guy finishes his case, the defendant asks the judge to throw the case out because he hadn't proved anything at all. The judge agreed. Now the injured worker appeals.

However, this got my attention:

 

Whoa!!  It's one thing to ask the case to thrown out because it hasn't been proven, but throwing in that the injured guy is an "illegal" is something else. Whatever your views are on illegal immigration, that was not a legal basis to have the case thrown out. When I saw the [2] at the end of it, it meant there was a footnote and I expected the court would take the lawyer to task. Nope. It was just legal stuff.

But after ruling in favor of the injured guy, they weren't going to let that comment go unnoticed. In a later footnote they said: