They can kinda do whatever they want. They could certainly do that if they found it convenient but they could also just apply the same reasoning to both cases without specifically citing to the previous one.
To be fair, obituaries hardly ever give the truth when people die in embarrassing ways. It's very common for suicide to not be the family's publicly stated reason for their loved one's death.
Some things are considered inherently non-retroactive, like anything that creates a new crime or enhances the penalty for an existing one. There's even an oddball category where there is no retroactivity whatsoever, even as applied to the current case, but the new rule applies to future cases. This is fairly common in § 1983 cases on the question of whether something is "clearly established law." They'll find that there wasn't any case law at the time making the new rule "clearly established law," but now that there is, it will be "clearly established law" in any future case.
The "I won my court case and made precedent case law, but all I got was this shirt" outcome.
“I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.”
I wonder some times how different things had been if Ty Beard had re-filed it under the new TCPA laws. I know he thought he could win as is, probably would've with any other judge,
Don't know where it stands legally, but I imagine from a common sense standpoint they only have a claim if they can demonstrate great negligence from the railroad, like frequent gaping holes and lack of maintenance where there should be walls to prevent entry, previous complaints from residents or accidents/near miss accidents around that area. A ratty fence shouldn't be enough on its own to make them culpable, because effort was clearly made to avoid incidents and you can't expect them to turn every train into a subway tunnel just to avoid incidents.
In this case, they outright failed to establish jurisdiction, because they didn't go through the proper presuit notice procedure under the Texas Tort Claims Act, so sovereign immunity implied to both government defendants.
Interestingly enough, Sudderth hasn't been on any of the three TCPA cases we've looked at so far.
If you only knew how bad it would actually be.
I'm pretty sure the 6th amendment only really applies to defendants in a criminal case.
I think @AnOminous answered something similar. You'd have to petition the court with authority over the appellate court (in this case, I think SCOTX), and mandamus them into getting a move on. Low chance of success.
In old common law, what you'd do is file for one of the ancient prerogative writs, specifically one called a writ of procedendo. This writ essentially orders an inferior court to come to a decision, but without ordering a specific decision (which the issuing court would generally actually not have original jurisdiction over anyway).
At least it's not dog's blood, since it might've perked up Ron Toye.