Court Opinion

ID: 9643717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:38:32.648417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:02.617952
License: Public Domain

Concurring opinion by:
PAUL W. GREEN, Justice.
I concur in the outcome, but only very reluctantly. My concern is that relators actually have no adequate remedy by appeal.
In this mandamus action, the majority likens a forum non conveniens denial to a venue ruling. And the supreme court has repeatedly told us that the denial of motion to transfer venue is merely an incidental trial ruling which, if erroneous, is correctable on appeal. But see In re Masonite Corp., 997 S.W.2d 194 (Tex.1999). But when it is asserted that the proper forum is a foreign country, a trial court’s erroneous denial of a motion to dismiss has much broader implications than a venue ruling. Appeal cannot be an adequate remedy when the case should not have to be tried at all.
When it is clear this country has no legitimate connection to events occurring in a foreign country, our courts should decline to accept jurisdiction of cases that arise out of those events.1 There are virtually no facts in this case that favor invoking the jurisdiction of the federal or state courts in this country. A Mexican commercial airliner, whose pilot and passengers were all Mexican citizens, crashed in Mexico while on a flight between two Mexican cities. All the plaintiffs are Mexican *385citizens and all the physical evidence and witnesses are located in Mexico. Relators are involved only to the extent that one is the owner and lessor of the aircraft and the other brokered the lease of the aircraft to the Mexican operator. Neither relator has its principal place of business in Texas.
In light of the above, relators make a good case that it was an abuse of discretion for the trial court to refuse to grant the motion to dismiss. It is fundamentally unfair to require these relators to defend themselves in a trial, even if successful. To have to wait for an appellate remedy simply compounds the unfairness. It is also unfair to the State and those litigants who rightfully seek relief in the Maverick County courts that scarce court resources will be needlessly preempted, and to those hard working citizen-jurors of Maverick County who will be required to sit through a lengthy and complex case that has no relationship at all to their community or their country.
Without relief, relators will also be subject to extraordinary difficulty and undue expense associated with trying to prepare a ease for trial in this country in connection with events that occurred in another country. While it is conceded that some cases may go to trial under these circumstances, I daresay those cases do not involve matters and issues as remote to the forum as exist in this case.
Nonetheless, the legislature has not provided an interlocutory appeal for the denial of a forum non conveniens motion to dismiss; mandamus is the only possible avenue of interlocutory relief. And because the supreme court has indicated that in mandamus actions forum non conveniens cases should be treated like venue cases, the majority denies relief on the basis that there is an adequate remedy by appeal.
I concur in the majority’s ruling only because I feel constrained by what appears to be the supreme court’s intent on the issue. If relief is to be afforded to these relators or future litigants facing similar facts, the supreme court or the legislature will have to provide the mechanism.

. As Justice Hecht has noted: "The rule of forum non conveniens, properly used, does not prohibit a court from entertaining a case it ought to hear. Rather, it protects courts from being compelled to hear cases when doing so would be fundamentally unfair to the defendants or the public or both.” In re Smith Barney, Inc., 975 S.W.2d 593, 598 (Tex.1998)(quoting from his dissent in Dow Chemical Co. v. Castro Alfaro, 786 S.W.2d 674, 707 (Tex.1990)).