A divided Dallas Court of Appeals reversed a trial court ruling on a discovery issue that the court’s majority decided should have never been allowed, but in doing so deviated from its own procedural rule to reach the merits of a writ of mandamus.

The record for the case of In re James Alan Barnes lays out a series of attorney half-measures and debatable judicial analysis, where defendants asked for medical records to which they weren’t entitled, the trial court abused discretion in granting them, the plaintiff relators twice failed to submit a complete record to the appeals court and the appeals court deviated from its own hard rule because, “the outcome might have been otherwise,” the court said.