Texas Supreme Court justices on Thursday considered questions about whether an exonerated criminal defendant must be declared “actually innocent” to sue a criminal defense attorney for legal malpractice, and how the statute of limitations might apply to those claims.

The case, Gray v. Skelton, involves a dispute between attorney Patricia Skelton, who was convicted in 2007 of forging the will of a client, but her conviction was overturned because of ineffective assistance of her criminal defense attorney, Guy James Gray. Prosecutors dismissed Skelton’s charge rather than retrying her case, and later, Skelton sued Gray for legal malpractice.