In a case with somewhat unusual procedural facts, the Beaumont Court of Appeals has issued a conditional writ of mandamus directing a Montgomery County trial court to vacate an order reinstating a lawsuit after dismissing it for want of prosecution.
In re Dakota Directional Drilling, Inc., Dakota Utility Contractors, Inc., and David Luke Fouse (No. 09-22-00317-CV; delivered June 1, 2023) arose from an accident in which a commercial vehicle allegedly rear-ended plaintiff’s vehicle, causing injuries. Plaintiff filed suit in January 2020 against the driver, the driver’s employer, and other defendants affiliated with the employer. In September 2020, the trial court signed an a docket control order setting a July 2021 trial date and requiring the parties to file a joint notice with the court at least 14 days before trial. If a party failed to participate in the joint notice, the suit would be dismissed for want of prosecution and “a finding of abandonment of claims or defenses pursuant to Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 165 and 165a.” In April plaintiffs filed a motion for continuance, which the court granted and signed a new docket control order setting a January 3, 2022, trial date, along with the 14-day pretrial notice. In October 2021, two defendants filed a motion for continuance, which the court once again granted, setting a trial date of May 2, 2022 (again with the 14-day pretrial notice). Apparently, the district clerk notified the defendant driver of the new docket order but no one else. The remaining defendants, unaware of the new docket order, duly submitted their pretrial filings on December 21, 2012, 14 days before the January 3 trial setting.
In a Christmas surprise, the trial court signed an order dismissing the case for want of prosecution on December 23, forgetting that he had signed a new docket order moving the trial date to May. The order instructed a party seeking to reinstate the case by sending an email to the clerk for placement on the court’s submission docket. On December 28, plaintiff sent an email attaching the new docket order and asking the court to “correct this matter and notify all parties that this case will remain on the Court’s Docket.” Nothing happened, and in April 2022 plaintiff filed another motion for continuance. At this point, the Dakota defendants argued that the trial court’s plenary power had expired in January and it lacked authority to reinstate the case. Plaintiff then filed a motion to reinstate. After a hearing, the trial court acknowledged the error and signed an order declaring the prior dismissal ineffective and reinstating the case. Defendants sought mandamus.
The court of appeals issued a conditional writ. In a per curiam opinion, the court first determined that the trial court’s dismissal order constituted a final judgment, not an interlocutory matter. Plaintiff argued that since the Dakota defendants’ in their original answers requested dollar-for-dollar offsets, sought a take-nothing judgment against plaintiff, including costs, and filed a no-evidence motion for summary judgment that the trial court set for submission on January 1, 2021, the dismissal order was interlocutory. Not so, ruled the court, for “the trial court did not find that its December 2022 order had been interlocutory. The trial court found the order was ineffective because the order was signed in error as the result of a clerical or ministerial error of the court.” Although signed in error, the order nevertheless “unequivocally dismissed the entire case, not just [plaintiff’s] claims against [Dakota].” The order further instructed the parties as to filing a motion to reinstate within the 30-day plenary authority period, but nobody did so. The order, while erroneous, nevertheless constituted a final judgment.
Plaintiff next argued that the order was simply void because “no procedural requirements upon which to ground a valid judicial act occurred” and the order was “a random, arbitrary, and capricious computer-generated document[.]” But, as the court of appeal observed, “[a] judgment is void only when the court rendering judgment had no jurisdiction of the parties, no jurisdiction of the subject matter, no jurisdiction to enter the judgment, or no capacity to act as a court” (citation omitted). Any other errors “render the judgment merely voidable.” Consequently, the trial court’s dismissal order was “merely voidable” and could be challenged “by direct attack, such as an appeal or bill of review” (citation omitted). Turning to the order itself, the court noted that an order rendering judgment is a “judicial error,” whereas “errors made in entering a judgment are clerical” (citation omitted). Whether an error is judicial or clerical is a matter of law, and in a similar case, Universal Underwriters Insurance Company v. Ferguson, 471 S.W.2d 28, 30 (Tex. 1971) (orig. proceeding), SCOTX held that even if the trial court would not have dismissed the case if it had known the facts, “dismissing the case was a judicial act that was not subject to correction after the thirty day period specified in Rule 329b expired.”
The upshot of the court’s ruling is that the trial court’s “mistaken belief did not deprive the trial court of the authority to adjudicate the case, to exercise jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter, or to act as a court.” The only remaining question was whether the trial court still had plenary power over the judgment when it tried to reinstate the case. That period ended in January 2022, whereas the reinstatement order was signed several months later. The trial court thus abused its discretion because plenary power had expired.
We take three things away from this case: scrutinize the language of judgments that purport to be “final,” don’t assume that a mistake is “clerical” and not “judicial,” and, if there is some question about that, file the necessary motions within 30 days to keep all options open.
