Board Decision Reversed on District Court Appeal
Our Client, J.R., a licensed real estate sales agent and former Federal Firearms Instructor, plead guilty to conversion of ammunition belonging to the federal government in 2014. J.R.’s conversion case contained substantial mitigation, but J.R. plead out pursuant to legal advice from his criminal attorney. The Texas Real Estate Commission (“TREC”) sought to revoke J.R.’s sales agent license. After successfully pleading J.R.’s case to an impartial Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) in the State Office of Administrative Hearings (“SOAH”), and saving J.R.’s license from revocation, TREC grossly violated the bounds of their judicial discretion and improperly manipulated the ALJ’s decision in order to revoke J.R.’s license. We appealed the case to a District Court and convinced the Judge that TREC’s abuse of discretion and unauthorized conduct was not only improper, but so improper as to pass the threshold for a reversal of TREC’s decision, pursuant to stringent standards of review.