Austin lawyer Jason Snell worried that his client may have trouble convincing a jury to award damages in his fraud trial last week—after all, the defendant he was suing just happened to be a well-known sitting judge in the same Central Texas courthouse where the trial was taking place.

Yet Snell was able to convince a Bastrop County jury this week that Justice of the Peace Donna Thomson intentionally violated the Deceptive Trades Practices Act when she sold Snell’s client a house without disclosing that she still had a mortgage on the property, hitting the judge with nearly $1 million in damages.