Court Opinion

ID: 9648779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:34:59.027873+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:05.390513
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
In our opinion we directed a remand of the case for further development, if within the power of Mustex, Incorporated. Appellants have filed a motion for rehearing in which they level a strenuous attack upon our interpretation of Jackson v. Hall, 1948, 147 Tex. 245, 214 S.W.2d 458, and insist that our judgment should be one of reversal and rendition rather than one which merely remands the case for another trial. In connection therewith appellants point out that Mustex was not prevented from fully developing its case on the plea of privilege, nor did it omit to do so as a result of an erroneous decision of the trial court, but that any failure on the part of Mustex in relation to development of its evidence was the result of a decision or election on its own part.
It is worthy of note that this court had occasion to write on this same question on May 10, 1963, in the case of Central Surety and Insurance Corporation v. First National Bank of Fort Worth.  The opinion in that case has not yet had time to appear in the reporter. It may well be that it will be published about the same time as our opinion in the instant case.
Therein we stated, “It is to be noted that the Supreme Court’s action in Jackson v. Hall was taken pursuant to its having granted leave to file a petition for mandamus against the Justices of the Court of Civil Appeals to compel a judgment of remand upon reversal of a trial court’s judgment overruling a plea of privilege, rather than the rendition by which the case was ordered transferred.
“Our interpretation of the holding in Jackson v. Hall is that as applied to appeals in general, and those from orders overruling pleas of privilege in particular, any proper judgment of an appellate court which .reverses the judgment of the trial court should be one which incorporates therein an order remanding the cause to the trial court, rather than one of rendition, when the reversal is occasioned by a lack of evidence in support of the judgment of the trial court,—unless it clearly appears that the case was fully developed, i. e., unless it clearly appears that there was no evidence available to be introduced in the trial court which would have supplied such ‘lack’.”
The statement quoted has complete application to the question in the instant case. If we err the law affords a method of obtaining a remedy.
Motion for rehearing is overruled. No additional motion for rehearing will be entertained.