Opinion ID: 2831499
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Initial Proceedings and Johnson I

Text: Johnson filed an enforcement motion in September 1997, seeking a judgment for the $25,537 lump-sum payment awarded in the decree, as well as $7,500 in past-due alimony and the accelerated $135,000 remaining balance (for a total of $142,500 in alimony), plus interest, attorney’s fees, and costs. Ventling answered with a general denial and raised the affirmative defenses of fraud, accident, mistake, collateral estoppel, and judicial estoppel. He also moved to nonsuit his original petition for divorce from 1995, sought rescission of the parties’ agreement, and requested that the trial court vacate the divorce decree. On January 9, 1998, the trial court denied Johnson’s enforcement motion “without prejudice to reconsideration of these issues by the Court,” but granted Johnson’s request for attorney’s fees and ordered the parties to mediate their dispute. Johnson did not appeal this order. Mediation proved unsuccessful, and in August 1999 Johnson moved for summary judgment on her enforcement motion. Ventling’s response largely mirrored his previous response to the enforcement motion, and he again moved to nonsuit his divorce petition.2 The trial court denied Johnson’s summary-judgment motion and granted Ventling’s motion for nonsuit. On July 25, 2001, the trial court signed a final judgment denying all relief requested by Johnson, including her enforcement motion. The court found that Ventling and Johnson were never married,3 concluded that the agreed divorce decree was an interlocutory order subject to the court’s plenary power, and 2 In both his 1997 and 1999 responses, Ventling asserted that the decree was an interlocutory order still subject to the trial court’s plenary power. 3 Johnson stipulated that she and Ventling were never married. 3 vacated the decree. The court also awarded Ventling attorney’s fees. Following an unsuccessful attempt to modify the judgment, Johnson appealed. On April 1, 2004, the court of appeals concluded in Johnson I that the 1995 divorce decree was a final judgment, that the trial court’s plenary power expired thirty days after the court signed the decree, and that Ventling’s challenge to its enforceability was an impermissible collateral attack. 132 S.W.3d at 178–79. Therefore, the court of appeals held that the trial court had no authority to modify the original disposition of property by vacating the decree. Id. at 179. Because the trial court lacked jurisdiction to vacate the decree, the court of appeals held that the 2001 judgment was void and dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction. Id. The court of appeals noted that the trial court “[a]rguably” had jurisdiction to deny Johnson’s enforcement motion, but declined to reach the merits of Johnson’s challenge to that denial. Id. at 179 n.4.