Source: https://www.texasappellatewatch.com/error-preservation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 22:07:42+00:00

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Is a Texas judgment final when it is silent about court costs?
Under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 131, a successful party is generally supposed to be awarded court costs in the final judgment. And the standard rule is that a Texas judgment is final when it disposes of all claims by all parties. But is a judgment final when it disposes of all claims but is silent about any award of court costs? It appears that the answer is "yes" -- the judgment is nevertheless final.
At least three Texas courts have held that a judgment is final even when it is silent about court costs. E.g., In re J.R., 123 S.W.3d 669, 671-72 (Tex. App.--Houston [14th Dist.] 2003, no pet.); City of Marshall v. Gonzales, 107 S.W.3d 799, 803 (Tex. App.--Texarkana 2003, no pet.); Thompson v. Beyer, 91 S.W.3d 902, 904-05 (Tex. App.--Dallas 2002, no pet.).
Based on this rule, one of those courts also elaborated that when a statute states that attorney's fees are to be awarded as court costs, the judgment is final even if it is silent about attorney's fees. In re J.R., 123 S.W.3d at 671-72. This twist applies only when the statute at issue treats attorney's fees as court costs.
So, if you get a judgment that is silent about court costs, don't automatically assume that the judgment is interlocutory. Your appellate clock could be ticking.
(B) refused to rule on the request, objection, or motion, and the complaining party objected to the refusal.
Tex. R. App. P. 33.1(a)(2).
Don't be tempted to rely on the idea of implicit rulings. Appellate courts are not very receptive to claims that a ruling was implicit. For example, see this post about a rejected attempt to invoke an implicit ruling after a bench conference. Additionally, almost all Texas appellate courts have refused to imply rulings on objections to summary-judgment evidence based simply on the fact that the trial court granted summary judgment.
When you file a motion, you will almost always have to set a hearing or take some other action to bring it to the court's attention. State court judges simply don't have time to go searching through the file looking for motions that need to be ruled on.
And when you make an oral objection during a hearing or at trial, be sure that the court actually rules on it. "Move along" or "thank you, counsel" are not rulings. Also, watch out for conditional rulings.
If the court refuses to rule, you may have to be assertive and ask for a ruling. For example in response to "move along." you will need to politely ask the court for a ruling. Of course, this involves a strategy call about which objections are important enough to risk the judge's ire by being a pest about a ruling. But for key obejctions, there may be no choice.
Not surprisingly, the appellate court found that error had been preserved. The procedure looks ponderous, but it is what the rules require to preserve error if the trial court refuses to rule.
In short, to be sure you've preserved error: (1) get a ruling; (2) don't rely on implicit rulings; and (3) if the trial court refuses to rule, object to the refusal.
Error preservation with respect to affidavits has, over the years, become something of a sticky wicket in Texas. Appellate courts agree that defects in the form of an affidavit must be raised in the trial court and ruled on to preserve error and that defects in the substance of an affidavit can be raised for the first time on appeal. The difficulty arises when trying to determine whether a particular defect is one of form or one of substance.
Last week, the Fourteenth Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a case that the court, on its own motion, considered en banc for the express purpose of deciding whether error related to an affidavit had been properly preserved. The opinion is Washington DC Party Shuttle, LLC v. IGuide Tours, LLC, No. 14-12-00303-CV, 2013 WL 3226768 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] June 27, 2013, no pet. h.). The court held that an objection that an affidavit fails to show that the witness has personal knowledge is a defect in form that must be raised in the trial court or waived.
Last year, the Supreme Court decided in The Mansions in the Forest L.P. v. Montgomery County, 365 S.W.3d 314 (Tex. 2012) (per curiam) that the absence of a jurat is a defect of form that must be raised in the trial court or it is waived. A key part of the Supreme Court's analysis is that the lack of the jurat could be cured if the defect was pointed out. We wrote about the decision here. Scott Stolley and I have also predicted that the rationale in the case could lead to more defects being held to be defects of form on the basis that they are correctable.
In Washington DC Party Shuttle, LLC, the en banc Fourteenth Court of Appeals first noted that there is a split among the courts of appeals (and even within the Fourteenth Court, which is why the court took the case en banc). The Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh courts had all held that an objection to lack of personal knowledge had to be raised in the trial court or it would be waived. The Third and the Eighth courts, while acknowledging contrary views, held that it was a substantive objection that could be waived at any time.
The en banc court relied on two key arguments to decide that the defect is one of form. First, the court pointed to the Texas Supreme Court's decision in Grand Prairie Independent School District v. Vaughan, 792 S.W.2d 944, 945 (Tex. 1990). There, the Supreme Court had held that the failure to demonstrate personal knowledge was a defect in form. Although the Supreme Court has not been consistent since Vaughan, it has never been overruled.
Second, the en banc court noted that requiring an objection is consistent with the overall policies of error preservation that the trial court should be given the first opportunity to correct errors before appeal and that a litigant should not be able to surprise his opponent on appeal. These policy reasons are similar to those that underlie the Supreme Court's decision in The Mansions in the Forest. Therefore, Washington DC Party Shuttle is likely just the next in what may be a long line of cases holding that a particular defect is one of form that must be raised or waived.
In short, when in doubt, go ahead and object, particularly when your opponent could correct the defect if it were to be pointed out. It is increasingly likely that such defects will be held to be defects of form that may be waived.
Reader John Bickel suggests that a running objection, when properly used, can be a very useful preservation tool. A running objection can keep appellate strategy from interfering with trial strategy. You can preserve the error without looking like a jack-in-the-box popping out of your chair to object after every question.
Get an adverse ruling from the court. This may seem obvious, but no error is preserved without an adverse ruling.
Get an express ruling from the court granting a running objection. Again, this may seem obvious, but many litigants have gotten themselves in trouble by having to argue that they had an implied running objection. E.g., Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC v. Star-L Land Co., No. 09-10-00475-CV, 2012 WL 585105 at *4 (Tex. App.—Beaumont 2012, no pet.). Don't risk it; get an express ruling.
Be specific. As John points out, a successful running objection will precisely identify both the objectionable evidence and every basis of the objection.
Renew the objection with each new witness that may present the objectionable evidence. Failure to expressly renew the objection will waive error. E.g., City of Fort Worth v. Holland, 748 S.W.2d 112, 113 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 1988, writ denied).
Be sure that running objections are part of your preservation toolkit, and follow these steps to ensure that they successfully preserve error.
Preserving error at trial is worthless if the appellate court doesn't know that you did it. Don't make the court search for it. Instead, appellants should do everything possible to make it easy for the appellate court to see where error was preserved. In this post, I'll give you an example that should make you nervous and then suggest a practice that should eliminate the potential problem.
First, I need to scare you. Let's suppose you are an appellant complaining about the exclusion of evidence. In your brief you point the appellate court to the portion of the record that includes your offer of proof and you quote the trial judge's statement that "I didn't allow it during your case in chief, and my ruling stands." You might think this is sufficient to show the court that you preserved error. After all you have the offer of proof and a ruling from the judge refusing to permit the evidence to be presented to the jury.
According to the Dallas Court of Appeals, you would be wrong. The court also wants to know where the evidence was offered during the case in chief, where the objection was made, and where the initial ruling was. And because your brief doesn't point to that portion of the record, the court of appeals is not going to look for it on its own. Therefore, you have waived error. See Keyes Helium Co. v. Regency Gas Services, L.P., 393 S.W.3d 858, 861-62 (Tex. App.–Dallas 2012, no pet.).
So, how do you avoid this nightmare scenario? As I noted above, make it easy for the court to see where you preserved error. When I represent an appellant, I drop a footnote at the end of each of my issue statements that says: "This issue was preserved in the trial court by ________." I then fill in the methods of preservation and provide citations to the record. This simple practice makes it easy for the court to see where I preserved error without interrupting the flow of my issue statements or my argument.
For most error that may occur during a trial, there is likely either a rule or a case that can provide guidance on preservation. But what do you do when something really out of the ordinary happens, something that feels like it came straight from a John Grisham novel?
There are a couple of fundamental things to keep in mind. First, make sure it's in the record somehow, because, as far as the appellate court is concerned, if it's not in the record, it didn't happen. This is particularly important for odd occurences that don't necessarily involve the spoken word. It's not the court reporter's job to narrate the events in the courtroom. This is where you get to say "let the record reflect that . . . ."
Second, let the trial court know that you think that error has just occurred or is about to occur. This is just as important as making sure it's in the record. A fundamental tenet of preservation jurisprudence is that the trial court should be given the opportunity to correct the error. There are limited exceptions for fundamental error, but you don't want to have to rely on them. If you have a chance to ask for the error to be corrected, do it.
Dist.] Aug. 30 2012, pet. filed). There, the appellant assigned error to several unusual things that occurred during trial, including that trial judge left the bench during trial, the trial judge examined a witness in front of the jury, and the trial judge made remarks during trial that unfairly prejudiced the appellant. Id. The court of appeals noted that the appellant did not complain about any of these events when they happened. Therefore, the court found that any error was waived.
In the comments, I would love to hear your strangest error preservation war stories. Let us know what happened and what you did to try to preserve the error.

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