## Facts

- FFA junior exhibitors (Leslie Hamrick, Jimmy Barton, and Kevin Copeland) entered animals in the 1991 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; entry required fees and signatures by both minors and parents agreeing to comply with show rules.
- The entry documents and rules allowed management to drug-test animals and disqualify entries based on laboratory analysis.
- The exhibitors’ animals tested positive under the show’s drug-testing program.
- The Houston Livestock Show disqualified the exhibitors, removed titles and prize money, barred future participation, and publicized the results in a manner the exhibitors alleged harmed their reputations.
- The exhibitors and parents sued the Houston Livestock Show and the state diagnostic laboratory involved in testing, asserting DTPA violations and multiple tort and contract theories tied to allegedly flawed testing and unfair sanctions.
- After a jury trial, the trial court rendered judgment against the Houston Livestock Show for approximately $1.5 million, including DTPA damages (with “knowing” findings), defamation-related damages, mental-anguish and reputation damages, attorney’s fees, and loss of prize money for one exhibitor.
- Although the jury found negligence and gross negligence by the laboratory, the court entered a take-nothing judgment for the laboratory based on Texas Tort Claims Act notice and limitations findings.

## Issues

1. Whether the minor exhibitors and their parents qualified as “consumers” under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) based on paying entry fees and participating in the show’s competition and related services.
2. Whether evidence supported findings that the Houston Livestock Show committed DTPA false, misleading, or deceptive acts or unconscionable conduct in administering testing, communicating results, and imposing sanctions, and whether those acts were a producing cause of damages.
3. Whether evidence was sufficient to support awards for mental anguish, injury to reputation, loss of prize money, and additional damages for “knowing” DTPA violations.
4. Whether attorney’s fees had to be segregated between DTPA and non-DTPA claims.
5. Whether the evidence supported defamation liability and related actual damages notwithstanding the jury’s finding of no malice.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the judgment against the Houston Livestock Show.
- The court held the minors and their parents were DTPA consumers because they sought and acquired an integrated set of services by purchase, including competition, judging, and drug testing.
- The court upheld the jury’s DTPA findings, concluding the evidence supported false, misleading, or deceptive conduct and unconscionability, and supported producing-cause causation.
- The court upheld actual damages awards for mental anguish, reputational injury, and the loss of prize money awarded to Leslie Hamrick, and upheld additional damages based on “knowing” DTPA violations.
- The court affirmed the attorney’s-fee award without segregation because the claims were based on a common core of facts and were sufficiently intertwined.
- The court rejected challenges to defamation and related damages and found no reversible error in other complained-of rulings.
- The take-nothing judgment in favor of the diagnostic laboratory remained in place due to Tort Claims Act notice and limitations bars.

## Legal Principles

- DTPA “consumer” status depends on whether the plaintiff sought or acquired goods or services by purchase and whether those goods or services form the basis of the complaint; a transaction may involve an integrated package of services rather than a single discrete service.
- Unconscionability under the DTPA may be shown by conduct that takes advantage of a party’s lack of knowledge, ability, or experience to a grossly unfair degree, and may extend to the manner in which an organization administers disciplinary/testing procedures tied to paid participation.
- “Producing cause” under the DTPA requires a causal link between the deceptive or unconscionable conduct and the complained-of damages; it does not require proof of reliance in the same manner as common-law fraud.
- Mental-anguish and reputational-injury damages may be recoverable when supported by evidence of substantial emotional distress and reputational harm tied to the challenged conduct and publications.
- Additional DTPA damages may be awarded upon proof the defendant acted “knowingly.”
- Attorney’s fees need not be segregated when recoverable and unrecoverable claims are so intertwined that the legal services advance a common set of facts and issues.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a substantial judgment against the Houston Livestock Show based on DTPA and defamation liability arising from its drug-testing and sanctioning process, concluding that both junior exhibitors and their parents were DTPA consumers, the evidence supported unconscionable and misleading conduct causing reputational and emotional harms, and attorney’s fees were properly awarded without segregation because the claims shared a common factual basis.


Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, Inc. v. Hamrick, 125 S.W.3d 555 (Tex. App.—Austin 2003)