Opinion ID: 1377577
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Court's Writings

Text: The Court engages in procedural gymnastics to avoid answering the constitutional question in this case. While Rule 279 may indeed resolve the specific alleged problem with the jury charge in this case, the Court refuses to answer the threshold procedural due process question and does not analyze the due process issue under the U.S. Supreme Court's guidelines for ascertaining the process due in termination proceedings. See Santosky, 455 U.S. at 754, 102 S.Ct. 1388; Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 27, 101 S.Ct. 2153. Because the Court does not answer the threshold constitutional question, the Court's writing leaves little guidance for practitioners and lower courts for how to determine if our error preservation rules violate due process when applied to other types of unpreserved errors. Undoubtedly, the Court must eventually resolve this issue, as there will not be a Rule 279 band-aid for every unpreserved trial error in parental-termination cases. Justice Hankinson's fundamental error analysis is no more compelling. The fundamental-error analysis disregards that the parents' due process claim here relates to our procedures about preserving error for appeal. And, the U.S. Supreme Court has dictated how courts must determine what process is due a parent. Santosky, 455 U.S. at 754, 102 S.Ct. 1388; Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 27, 101 S.Ct. 2153. However, rather than conduct this analysis, the dissent contends that our common law doctrine of fundamental error applies. But this disregards the true natureand dangerof Texas's fundamental error jurisprudence. Historically, courts have applied fundamental error in civil cases under very limited circumstances. Typically, as the dissent recognizes, the concept of fundamental error is expressed in our jurisprudence holding that subject-matter jurisdiction may be raised at any time. See, e.g., Texas Ass'n of Bus. v. Texas Air Control Bd., 852 S.W.2d 440, 445 (Tex. 1993). However, the other types of civil cases applying fundamental errorthe cases involving public-interest-based issuesare rare. Again, as the dissent recognizes, this Court has often declined to apply fundamental-error review, recently doing so in a case in which a child's welfare and constitutional issues were raised. See, e.g., Texas Dep't of Protective & Regulatory Servs. v. Sherry, 46 S.W.3d 857, 861 (Tex.2001). Perhaps the Court has not applied fundamental-error review in many cases, because the concept is nebulous and imprecise. This Court has held that fundamental error exists if the error directly and adversely affects the interest of the public generally, as that interest is declared in the statutes or Constitution of this state. Ramsey v. Dunlop, 146 Tex. 196, 205 S.W.2d 979, 983 (1947). But under this test, an argument may be made under almost any statute that public policy favors reviewing the unpreserved issue. Moreover, under the dissent's analysis, if courts can review unpreserved jury-charge errors based on the Family Code expressing a public policy that the child's best interest is of primary concern, then courts can review any unpreserved error in parental-termination cases. In other words, a logical extension of the dissent's applying fundamental-error review here is that appellate courts must review any unpreserved error in a parental-termination case, because any error could affect the public's overarching concern with the child's best interest. Thus, fundamental-error review results in a slippery slope that, for all the reasons under the Eldridge factors adopted in Lassiter and discussed above, would cause more harm than good in termination cases. III. CONCLUSION The question the Court is asked to answer today is whether due process requires an appellate court to review unpreserved errors in the jury charge. The answer is no. I cannot join the Court's opinion, because it declines to answer this question and instead relies on a procedural rule that gives no guidance for future cases. Moreover, the parents raised other issues the court of appeals did not consider, including a challenge to the factual sufficiency of the evidence. Accordingly, the court of appeals' judgment should be reversed and remanded to that court for further proceedings.