Motion Denied and Order filed October 28, 2021 

In The

Fourteenth Court of Appeals

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NO. 14-21-00404-CV

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KHERA INTEREST, INC., Appellant

V.

WILMINGTON TRUST NATIONAL ASSOCIATION NOT IN ITS 

INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY BUT SOLELY AS TRUSTEE OF THE MFRA 

TRUST 2015-1, Appellee

On Appeal from the 151st District Court

Harris County, Texas

Trial Court Cause No. 2020-11448

ORDER

Before this court is appellant’s motion to modify a supersedeas bond. We 

deny the motion.

This appeal concerns the status of a mortgage lien held by appellee on real 

property (the “Property”) to which appellant has the title. On May 25, 2021, the 

trial court entered a final order granting declaratory relief to appellee and holding 
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appellant’s title to the Property was subject to appellee’s mortgage lien. The order 

did not itself specify the mortgage lien’s value or amount.

After this appeal began, appellee placed the Property on a non-judicial 

foreclosure list and scheduled it for a September 7, 2021 foreclosure. Before the 

Property could be foreclosed on, appellant filed a motion with the trial court on 

August 26, 2021 to suspend enforcement of the judgment and set a supersedeas 

bond. While the motion remained pending with the trial court, the parties agreed 

to defer foreclosure through September if appellant deposited $2,500 into the trial 

court’s registry. Appellant did so, and the foreclosure did not proceed as originally 

scheduled. On September 7, 2021, the trial court issued an order requiring a 

monthly payment of $1,300 from appellant, which appellant had acknowledged 

was the Property’s monthly rental rate at the time, in order to supersede the 

judgment while the appeal proceeded. While appellant has paid that amount as 

ordered by the trial court, it has sought relief from this court on the basis the trial 

court ordered an erroneous amount for supersedeas.

Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 24.4(a)(1), parties may seek 

appellate review on the sufficiency or excessiveness of the amount of a security 

ordered by a trial court as a supersedeas bond. We review such decisions for an 

abuse of discretion. See O.C.T.G. L.L.P. v Laguna Tubular Prods. Corp. 525 

S.W.3d 822, 829 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2017, mand. denied). An 

abuse of discretion exists when the trial court acts without reference to any guiding 

rules and principles or when it acts arbitrarily and unreasonably. See id. (citing 

McDaniel v. Yarbrough, 898 S.W.2d 251, 253 (Tex. 1995)).

Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 24.1(a) authorizes judgment debtors like 

appellant to supersede a judgment pending appeal by, among other methods, filing 
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with the trial court a good and sufficient bond, which must be in the amount 

required by Rule 24.2. See Tex. R. App. P. 24.1(a)(2), (b)(1)(A). Rule 24.2 

contains two possibilities for the proper supersedeas amount in this case. When a 

judgment is for “the recovery of an interest in real . . . property,” the amount of the 

security “must be at least[] the value of the property interest’s rent or revenue.” 

Tex. R. App. P. 24.2(a)(2)(A). When the judgment “is for something other than 

money or an interest in property,” there is less of a numeric limit to what must be

or can be ordered by the trial court as a supersedeas bond. Rather, the trial court 

“must set the amount and type of security” so as to “adequately protect the 

judgment creditor against loss or damage that the appeal might cause.” Tex. R. 

App. P. 24.2(a)(3).

Appellant’s initial argument contends that, because the underlying judgment 

is for something other than money or a property interest, the underlying 

supersedeas bond is excessive under Rule 24.2(a)(3) as it exceeds adequate 

protection against loss or damage to appellee. This argument is not consistent with

this court’s precedent. In Abdullatif v. Choudhri, we considered which of those 

two rules best fit a judgment awarding declaratory relief clarifying who held

ownership interests in several non-corporate business associations. 536 S.W.3d 

48, 50–51 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2017, no pet.). Although the

appellant in that case contended that superseding such relief was governed by Rule 

24.2(a)(3) on the basis that the underlying declaratory judgments were for 

something other than money and property, we held that Rule 24.2(a)(2) and its 

property-based limits applied since the underlying declarations “validate[d] a 

transfer of interests in . . . property to [the appellee].” Id. at 55. That rule applies 

here with equal force. The current case’s declaratory judgment regarding how 
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appellee’s mortgage lien impacts appellant’s title to real property is just as much a 

judgment for the recovery of a property interest as a declaration about who owns, 

and the extent to which they own, interests in business associations. So Rule 

24.2(a)(2) and its standard for “the value of the property interest’s rent or revenue,”

rather than Rule 24.2(a)(3) and its requirement for “adequate[] protect[ion for] the 

judgment creditor,” is the proper rule for evaluating the amount of this case’s 

supersedeas bond.

That largely resolves appellant’s motion, as of the four different amounts 

appellant contends are a more appropriate measure for the supersedeas bond, three 

of them (the interest on the underlying note, zero on the basis that the lien itself 

serves as adequate security, and the $2,500 deposit appellant initially placed in the 

trial court’s registry) do not align with Rule 24.2(a)(2)’s the requirement that the 

bond be set at “the value of the property interest’s rent or revenue.” All that 

remains is appellant’s fourth proposal, the Property’s net rental value. Appellant 

contends that in light of such costs as ownership and management expenses, it only 

nets $650 on the $1,300 it receives in rental money each month. However, 

particularly as there is no indication that appellee would itself necessarily be

paying those costs instead of a tenant, we see no abuse of discretion in the trial 

court’s choice to use the total rent appellant receives, rather than the net amount it 

receives from rent. Cf., e.g., Hayes v. Johnson, No. 05-17-01116-CV, 2019 WL 

2266390, at *1 (Tex. App.—Dallas May 28, 2019, no pet.) (discussing an 

arrangement by which a property tenant not only paid the property owner rent each 

month, but also paid the owner’s insurance and property taxes and was moreover 

“responsible for ‘upkeep’”).
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Accordingly, as this court finds no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s 

decision to require $1,300 per month to be deposited to supersede its judgment, we 

deny appellant’s motion to modify its supersedeas bond.

PER CURIAM

Panel Consists of Justices Wise, Bourliot, and Zimmerer.