The trial court erred in denying appellant's application for injunction by its failure to acknowledge that the State Bar Act, Tex.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 320a–1 (1979) and certain State Bar Rules, Supreme Court of Texas, Rules Governing the State Bar of Texas art. X, § 7(1)(4)(5)(9) (1979), violate the Texas and United States constitutional rights to commercial free speech, equal protection of the laws, and open access to the courts.
[W]e also need not resolve the problems associated with in-person solicitation of clients—at the hospital room or the accident site, or in any other situation that breeds undue influence—by attorneys or their agents or “runners.” Activity of that kind might well pose dangers of overreaching and misrepresentation not encountered in newspaper announcement advertising.
Unlike a public advertisement, which simply provides information and leaves the recipient free to act upon it or not, in-person solicitation may exert pressure and often demands an immediate response, without providing an opportunity for comparison or reflection. The aim and effect of in-person solicitation may be to provide a one-sided presentation and to encourage speedy and perhaps uninformed decision-making; there is no opportunity for intervention or counter-education by agencies of the Bar, supervisory authorities, or persons close to the solicited individual.
Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.
[V]arious states, like Texas, have broader free speech and assembly protections, which are often positively phrased as affirmative grants of rights rather than the simple restriction on government power observed in the first amendment to the federal constitution. These more expansive guarantees, which are within a state's “sovereign right” as recognized by the federal Supreme Court, offer a significant distinction upon which courts rely to construe their state constitutions.
All courts shall be open, and every person for an injury done him, in his lands, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law.
When a wife who has just learned of her husband's death cannot even mourn her loss without being pursued by a pack of ‘investigators' who are dispatched to scenes of tragedy to tout the services of lawyers, her dignity is eroded, her loss cheapened, her privacy trampled.
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