On April 24, 2015, the Texas Supreme Court decided Brown & Gay Eng’g, Inc. v. Olivares, No. 13-0605, — S.W.3d —, 2015 WL 1897646 (Tex. April 24, 2015), a case in which a private engineering firm retained by a governmental entity to design and build a toll road asserted “derivative sovereign immunity” in an effort to protect itself from liability for a three-fatality accident caused by its own negligent design. Peter Kelly convinced the Texas Supreme Court to decline to expand the doctrine of governmental immunity to extend to private entities that contract with the government, and allowed the underlying lawsuit against the engineering firm to proceed. Justice Lehrmann’s opinion can be found here, and a concurring opinion by Chief Justice Hecht can be found here.
