DISMISS and Opinion Filed May 3, 2022 

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In The 

### Court of Appeals Fifth District of Texas at Dallas No. 05-22-00306-CV TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT AND JOHN SILOVSKY, WILDLIFE DI VISION DIRECTOR, Appellants V. RW TROPHY RANCH, LTD. AND RO BERT WILLIAMS, Appellees On Appeal from the County Court at Law No. 2 Kaufman County, Texas Trial Court Cause No. 110299-CC2 MEMORANDUM OPINION Before Justices Molberg, Goldstein, and Smith Opinion by Justice Goldstein Appellants Texas Parks and Wildlife De partment and John Silovsky, Wildlife Division Director (collectively the Department ) filed this interlocutory appeal of the trial court’s April 1 temporary restraining or der (TRO). The Depa rtment asserted in its notice of appeal that the TRO implicitly denied its plea to the jurisdiction and was, therefore, appealable pursuant to s ection 51.015(a)(8) of the civil practice and remedies code. See T EX
. C IV
. P RAC
. & R EM
. C ODE A NN . § 51.014(a)(8) (order granting or denying a plea to the jurisdic tion by governmental unit is subject to interlocutory appeal). Appellees RW Trophy Ranch, Ltd. and its owner Robert–2– Williams (collectively the Ranch), have file d a motion to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction. In the underlying case, the Ranch, a d eer breeding facility, and Williams sued the Department to prevent it fr om implementing a plan to slaughter all of its deer in an effort to contain an outbreak of chroni c wasting disease – a contagious and fatal neurodegenerative disorder. After the trial court signed an initial TRO, the Department filed a plea to the jurisdicti on. At the conclusi on of the March 29 hearing on the Department’s plea, the Ran ch announced that it intended to file a second request for a TRO. It asked the tr ial court to grant its second request and defer ruling on the Department’s plea until th e trial court “has a chance to look at some of the merits of the case.” The Ranch filed its request for a second TRO on March 30. On April 1, afte r the parties had submitted their proposed orders, the trial court signed a second TRO that enjoined the Department from killing the deer and set a hearing date of April 13 for the Ranch’s application for a temporary injunction. By its terms, the TR O expired on April 14. 1 The purpose of a TRO is to preserve the status quo and it restrains a party from acting only during the pendency of a motion for temporary injunction. See In re Spiritas Ranch En terprises, L.L.P. , 218 S.W.3d 887, 895 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2007, orig. proceeding). A TRO does not constitute a ruling on the merits. See

1 By order dated April 15, this Court stayed the Department from euthanizing and initiating postmortem disease testing of the deer pending resolution of the motion to dismiss.–3– Fernandez v. Pimentel , 360 S.W.3d 643, 646 (Tex. App.—E l Paso 2012, no pet.). While an interlocutory appeal from the grant or denial of a temporary injunction is allowed, no statutory provision permits an appeal from a temporary restraining order. See Nikolouzos v. St. Luke’s Episcopal Hosp. , 162 S.W.3d 678, 680 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist .] 2005, no pet.). In its motion to dismiss, the Ranch asserts the TRO whic h expired by its own terms on April 14 is not appealable because it did no more than protect the status quo for a period of fourteen days as allowe d under rule 680 of the rules of civil procedure. See T EX
. R. C IV
. P. 680. For this reason, the Ranch asserts, we lack jurisdiction and the appeal should be dismissed. In its response to the motion to dismi ss, the Department counters the TRO is appealable because, in granting the TRO, the trial court implicitly denied its plea to the jurisdiction which is subject to an interlocutory appeal. See T EX
. C IV
. P RAC
. &
R EM
. C ODE A NN . § 51.014(a)(8). The Department relies on two cases from this
Court. See Tex. Dep’t of Family & Protectiv e Servs. v. ASI Gymnastics, Inc. , No. 05-09-01469-CV, 2010 WL 2764793, at *1 n. 2 (Tex. App.—Dalla s July 14, 2010, no pet.) (mem. op.); Abbott v. Jenkins , No. 05-21-00733-CV, 2021 WL 5445813, at *5 (Tex. App.—Dallas Nov. 22, 2021, pet. pending) (mem . op.). Those cases are distinguishable. Although this Court addre ssed the implied denial of pleas to the jurisdiction, the appellant in each case appealed from a temporary injunction over which we do have jurisdiction. See T EX
. C IV
. P RAC
. & R EM
. C ODE A NN
.–4– § 51.014(a)(4) (interlocutory order that grants or denies temporary injunction appealable). By contrast, there is no stat ute giving this Court jurisdiction to review a temporary restraining order. Additionally, the Department relies on Thomas v. Long , 207 S.W.3d 334 (Tex. 2006). The plaintiff in Thomas filed a motion for partial summary judgment on two of her claims and the defe ndant filed a cross-motion for summary judgment in which he challenged the trial court’s jurisdiction over those claims. See id . at 337. The trial court granted the plaintiff’s motion a nd the defendant appealed. The court of appeals dismissed the appeal because the record did not contain an order denying the plea to the jurisdiction. The Supreme Court reversed. It held the trial court’s granting partial summary judgment constitu ted an implicit rejection of Thomas’s jurisdictional challenges asserted in hi s cross-motion for summary judgment because the trial court could not have reached the me rits without subject matter jurisdiction. Id . at 339-40. The holding in Thomas is inapplicable because, unlike this case, the trial court in Thomas made a ruling on the merits wh ich it could not do without first determining it had jurisdiction. Here, the TRO did nothing more than ma intain the status quo for the allowable amount of time under rule 680. On the record before us, it appears the trial court implicitly deferred ruling on the plea to the jurisdiction in favor of entering the TRO as requested by the Ranch at the hearing. We cannot construe the straight-forward TRO as an implicit denial of the plea to the jurisdiction. Because there is no–5– authority allowing review of a temporary restraining order, we grant the Ranch’s motion, lift the stay issued by this Cour t’s April 15, 2022 order, and dismiss the appeal. See T EX
. R. A PP
. P. 42.3(a).

220306F.P05 /Bonnie Lee Goldstein / BONNIE LEE GOLDSTEIN JUSTICE–6– 

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Court of Appeals Fifth District of Texas at Dallas JUDGMENT

TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT AND JOHN SILOVSKY, WILDLIFE DIVISION DIRECTOR, Appellants
No. 05-22-00306-CV V. RW TROPHY RANCH, LTD. AND ROBERT WILLIAMS, Appellees On Appeal from the County Court at Law No. 2, Kaufman County, Texas Trial Court Cause No. 110299-CC2. Opinion delivered by Justice Goldstein. Justices Molberg and Smith participating.

In accordance with this Court’s op inion of this date, the appeal is DISMISSED

. It is ORDERED that appellees RW TROPHY RANCH, LTD. AND ROBERT WILLIAMS recover their costs of this appeal from appellants TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT AND JOHN SILOVSKY, WILDLIFE DIVISION DIRECTOR.

Judgment entered May 3, 2022