Judge Janis Graham Jack ’81
While the commute was strenuous, Jack especially appreciated Associate Dean T. Gerald Treece and other faculty who helped her achieve her law degree, saying, “Dean Treece made everything welcoming, and made every accommodation for me. He was such a good guy, and everyone was so supportive and worked with my schedule.” Even with such a solid support system, Jack says she was scared for most of her first year. “Everything was in a new language,” she said. “You have to learn quickly to think like a lawyer, and eventually you begin to learn this language. The second year is so much more interesting because everything is not as foreign.” Jack worked in private practice in Corpus Christi from 1981 until 1993, when President Bill Clinton nominated her to the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The Senate confirmed the appointment on March 10, 1994, and she received her commission the following day. Dean Treece was among the first to call and congratulate her on her nomination, offering the school’s full support. The passion and perseverance she showed in her years as a law student have allowed Jack to lead a successful, thorough, fair and honorable courtroom. She takes her job very seriously, earning a reputation for reading every piece of paper submitted on a case. She wants every lawyer who enters her courtroom to be confident that she is well versed on the case at hand. “It is such an honor to have this job,” Jack said. “I mean, sometimes I look around and can’t believe I am sitting on this bench, and I am humbled by the power that goes with the office. It requires a lot of caution.” Jack gained major attention when she admonished a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers in a 249-page opinion on a 2005 silicosis tort case, “In Re: Silica Products Liability Litigation.” More than 10,000 plaintiffs who worked with silica dust filed suit against their employers, claiming the exposure led them to contract silicosis, a disabling and often fatal lung disease. After pretrial proceedings and three days of hearings, Jack concluded that most of the claims “were essentially manufactured on an assembly line” made up of plaintiff ’s lawyers, screening companies, and doctors who fabricated phony diagnoses, often without ever seeing the patient in person. She called for sanctions against one of the plaintiffs’ law
firms and sent all but one of the cases back to the state courts where they originated. The ruling set a new precedent for mass tort litigation and sent a strong message to the attorneys who file such claims — they had better have their facts straight. The court would not permit further attempts at “overwhelming the system to prevent examination of each individual claim and to extract mass settlements.” Jack did recognize one legitimate case among the falsehoods, and concluded her report by expressing compassion for those truly affected by unhealthy work conditions, stating, “Silicosis is a continuing tragedy in our country. Those suffering the effects of the disease do not need an inflated number of claims to lend gravitas to their situation. Their tragedy stands on its own.” Currently, Jack is working on another notable class-action case, M.D. v. Abbott, which questions the current Texas foster care system. The case focuses on not only foster kids, but on all vulnerable kids— almost 30,000 of them— whose welfare is in the hands of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). The documents provided in the case analyze Texas child-welfare procedures in more precise detail than many DFPS bureaucrats have been able to define at trial, identifying decades of systematic failings. In her published case opinions to date, Jack has deemed the Texas foster care system unconstitutional and broken. “Texas [foster] children have been shuttled throughout a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm,” she wrote. “These children have for too long been forgotten. Their stories deserve to be told.” The case, still ongoing, may have drastic implications for the system’s future. Her strong opinions in the DFPS case gave Jack statewide media exposure and led to her nomination and win for 2016 Texan of the Year by Dallas News – one of many distinguished awards she has received throughout her career, including STCL Houston Distinguished Alumna in 1998. Jack, who finished second in her class at South Texas, attributes much of her success to her solid support system— her daughter, husband and parents who loved and supported her through law school and beyond — and the law school that gave her a chance. “Without South Texas, I could not have done this. It truly took a village to get me here.”
“It is such an honor to have this job. I mean, sometimes I look around and can’t believe I am sitting on this bench, and I am humbled by the power that goes with the office. It requires a lot of caution.” – JUDGE JANIS GRAHAM JACK ’81
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