Court Opinion

ID: 9947202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-03 15:10:09.534805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:26:11.470199
License: Public Domain

Supreme Court of Texas
                            ══════════
                             No. 22-0242
                            ══════════

                           Eve Lynn Baker,
                                Petitioner

                                    v.

                           Terry Lee Bizzle,
                                Respondent

   ═══════════════════════════════════════
               On Petition for Review from the
       Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas
   ═══════════════════════════════════════

      JUSTICE YOUNG, joined by Chief Justice Hecht and Justice
Blacklock, concurring.

      The Court holds that the trial judge’s email to the parties was not
a “rendition” of a final judgment because a court “renders” judgment only
with a public announcement of the decision, which the email did not do.
I agree and join the Court’s opinion, as well as Justice Lehrmann’s
scholarly concurrence. Both opinions correctly, comprehensively, and
clearly describe current law.
      But I am unsatisfied with the status quo—nobody should be
satisfied with it. Our system’s tedious distinction among “rendering”
judgments, “signing” them, and “entering” them was necessary in early
Texas, when judges would travel by horseback to attend court in far-flung
locations. The confusion sown by these distinctions today, however, is
needless and intolerable. Technology now permits judicial actions to be
publicly disseminated with the click of a button and in the flash of an eye.
Our law increasingly and wisely requires courts to provide notice this way,
including in a statute the legislature adopted in its last regular session.
      I therefore write separately to suggest that the time has come for
proper changes—whether in procedural rules, statutes, or common law—
to bring much-needed clarity and efficiency to our system of litigation.
Specifically, we should consider banishing from current practice the
distinctions among “rendering,” “signing,” and “entering,” and enshrine
those distinctions into Texas’s storied legal history. This Court could
achieve much of that goal through our rule-making authority, but
legislative consideration of further statutory amendments would be
necessary to truly move beyond our archaic system of judgment-formation.

                                     I

      As the Court explains, Texas law distinguishes among the
rendition, signing, and entry of a judgment. Ante at 7–8. These three
actions currently need not and often do not occur simultaneously. As we
observed before the dawn of the current technological era, “[t]he day a
judge signs an order is frequently, perhaps usually, after the time the
judgment is rendered and surely it is before the judgment is entered.”
Burrell v. Cornelius, 570 S.W.2d 382, 384 (Tex. 1978).
      This triadic system has always had problems, which remain serious.
But the system developed for reasons rooted in the historic conceptions of
each step’s role. Together, they formed a sensible structure, but one that
I cannot imagine anyone building from scratch today.

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       The most important step was rendition, which the law has long
understood as the “judicial act of the court in pronouncing the sentence of
the law.” Henry Campbell Black, A Treatise on the Law of Judgments 113
(1st ed. 1891). Rendition was the main event—the one that enforceably
adjusted the rights of the parties. It could be either oral or written. See,
e.g., Dunn v. Dunn, 439 S.W.2d 830, 832 (Tex. 1969).
       “The entry of a judgment,” by contrast, was (and is) “a ministerial
act, which consists in spreading upon the record a statement of the final
conclusion reached by the court in the matter.” Black, supra, at 113–14;
see also Dunn, 439 S.W.2d at 832 (“[T]he entry of a trial judgment is only
a ministerial act.”). Rendition, therefore, had to go first, and was deemed
conceptually and temporally “independent of the fact of its entry” on the
record.   Black, supra, at 115.     The ministerial entry of a rendered
judgment was “not essential to the validity of the judgment itself,” and
the court clerk’s failure to enter a judgment “[would] not, as between the
parties, operate to invalidate the judgment.” Id. at 119.
       Signing was different still.       As our system developed, the
“requirement that a judge shall sign all judgments rendered in his court
[was] merely directory.” Id. at 118. The signature, in other words, served
as a kind of signal that should lead to entry—the signature was merely
“the allowance or permission by the master, prothonotary, or other proper
officer, to the plaintiff or defendant, to have judgment entered in his
favor” by the court clerk. Id. at 117 n.11 (quoting French v. Pease, 10 Kan.
51, 55 (1872)).1

       1 But just as the lack of entry itself did not invalidate a judgment as

between the parties, neither did the lack of a signature, because the judgment

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       Historically, therefore, rendition was the central moment. If it was
oral, busy courts, or clerks uninformed of the rendition, might fail to
provide a subsequent signed judgment or enter the rendition into the
record. See, e.g., Bassett v. Mills, 34 S.W. 93, 94 (Tex. 1896) (explaining
that a judgment was not entered in the record “by reason of some
oversight”); Trotti v. Kinnear, 144 S.W. 326, 329 (Tex. Civ. App.—
Galveston 1912, no writ) (explaining that the failure to have the judgment
entered on the record “was due to the inadvertence or negligence of the
clerk”). Signing or entry could be overlooked—perhaps for years. See,
e.g., Burnett v. State, 14 Tex. 455, 456 (1855) (authorizing the court to
direct the clerk to enter on the record a judgment that “was actually made
at a former term and omitted to be entered by the clerk”). A signed and
entered judgment was always desirable, but—and this is what matters
for today’s purposes, and why I have belabored the point—those steps

had “force and effect . . . whether it is ever signed by the judge or not.” Black,
supra, at 119. A signed judgment is not necessary for a judgment to bind the
parties, as this Court has held and as lower courts occasionally continue to
observe. See, e.g., Dunn, 439 S.W.2d at 832–33; In re Marriage of Martz, No. 09-
21-00048-CV, 2022 WL 2251731, at *5 (Tex. App.—Beaumont June 23, 2022,
pet. denied) (citing Dunn for the proposition that a rendered judgment finally
settles the parties’ rights and is not affected by further proceedings). In practice,
however, signed judgments are required, because without them, many other
steps in the litigation process are impossible. See, e.g., Tex. R. App. P. 26.1
(requiring a party to file a notice of appeal within 30 days after a judgment is
signed); Tex. R. App. P. 4.2(c) (requiring judges to sign written orders finding
when a party first received notice or acquired actual knowledge that a judgment
was signed). Because of the impairment of parties’ rights, a court that refuses
to sign a judgment may become the proper target of a mandamus proceeding.
See, e.g., In re Pete, 607 S.W.3d 481, 483 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2020,
orig. proceeding) (conditionally granting mandamus relief requiring a court to
sign a written order on a party’s motion because “the act of committing the
judgment or order to writing and signing it is a ministerial act”).

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were not needed or expected at the same time as the court’s rendition of
judgment.
      It may seem as though, even long ago, nothing justified dividing
the stages of forming a court’s judgment—a trifurcation, one might even
say—but the opposite is true. As I see it, the system developed because
of its practical benefits. Sometimes, judgments could not be quickly
reduced to writing for public consumption, requiring delays between a
judgment’s rendition and its subsequent entry on the record. Litigants
also benefited from the system—they could proceed as if bound by a final
judgment without needing to wait for a written order to memorialize it.
      The system also allowed judges to decide cases quickly, leaving it
to clerks to enter their judgments while the judges traveled to other towns
to decide cases. Such a scheme was especially helpful in early Texas,
when a small number of judges “handled crowded dockets . . . traveling
their multicounty circuits twice a year to hear daunting numbers of
cases.” James L. Haley, The Texas Supreme Court: A Narrative History,
1836-1986, at 33 (2013). In the days of the Republic, the justices of this
Court were the district judges, plus a chief justice. Michael Ariens, Lone
Star Law: A Legal History of Texas 201 (2011). Since the Supreme Court
could not meet without the presence of a majority of the district judges,
id., a system that permitted their quick movement throughout Texas
was important.
      Historical roots like that one—and many others—illustrate why
it often was essential for the key step of rendition to be distinct. But
that does not mean that entry of the judgment was ever unimportant.
For example, a court’s entry of judgment would “furnish an enduring

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memorial and incontestable evidence of the judgment, and . . . fix its
date for purposes of . . . creating a lien.” Black, supra, at 119. The entry
of judgment, in other words, was historically understood as the effective
date of notice to non-parties of the court’s judgment.
       Having a judgment properly appear in the record was also
essential to establish a court’s appellate jurisdiction. Regardless of
when a judgment was rendered, if it was not entered into the record
before a party appealed, courts would dismiss the appeal for lack of
jurisdiction. See, e.g., Scott v. Burton, 6 Tex. 322, 322 (1851) (dismissing
an appeal from a judgment that was not entered on the record); Simpson
v. Bennett, 42 Tex. 241, 241 (1874) (holding that “there [was] no final
judgment” because “the record shows no final disposition of this case”
and dismissing the appeal for lack of jurisdiction); Mignon v. Brinson,
11 S.W. 903, 904 (Tex. 1889) (dismissing a case for lack of jurisdiction
because “an appeal will lie from the judgment entered”).
       Over time, the date a judgment was signed also grew in
importance. Because renditions of judgment were not required to be in
writing, they often were not written down for entry into the record, which
made it difficult for parties to calculate procedural timelines. 2            For

       2 In part to avoid such problems, our rules of procedure—nearly from

their birth—emphasized the date a judgment was signed to “insure [the
judgment’s] appearance of record,” Official Amendments to Texas Rules of
Practice and Procedure in Civil Cases, 8 Tex. B.J. 532, 534 (1945) (Rule 306a),
and thus “enable the appellant to ascertain more definitely when the time to
perfect an appeal begins to run,” Tentative Amendments to Rules of Civil
Procedure, 8 Tex. B.J. 405, 408 (1945); see also Rogers v. Peeler, 271 S.W.3d 372,
376–77 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2008, pet. denied) (citing Texas Rule of Appellate
Procedure 26.1 and Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 329b when noting that “[t]he
importance of the date the written judgment is signed is to provide certainty
in calculating procedural timetables”).

                                        6
example, an early amendment to Rule 306a directed judges, attorneys,
and clerks “to use their efforts to cause all judgments, decisions, and
orders . . . to be reduced to writing and signed by the trial judge and the
date of signing stated therein,” but continued to acknowledge that the
“absence of any such showing shall not invalidate any judgment or order.”
Official Amendments to Texas Rules of Practice and Procedure in Civil
Cases, 8 Tex. B.J. 532, 533 (1945). A later amendment to Rule 306a
“eliminate[d] the use of the term ‘rendition of judgment,’” Rules of Civil
Procedure: New Amendments, 43 Tex. B.J. 767, 778 (1980), to make
abundantly clear that “[t]he date a judgment or order [was] signed” was
what courts must use to “determine the beginning of the periods
prescribed by these rules.” Id. at 775 (emphasis added).3
       Our law has also consciously reduced its emphasis on rendition of
judgment to limit undesirable ambiguity. When parties get a rendition
unaccompanied by other indicia of a judgment, they often have more
questions than answers. Appearances can be deceiving. To be a binding
rendition of judgment, for example, the oral pronouncement must
“dispose[] of all issues between the two parties.” State v. Naylor, 466
S.W.3d 783, 789 (Tex. 2015). Otherwise, it is not a rendition at all—
what seems like it would bind the parties in fact will not. And, as today’s
case reflects, a purported rendition of judgment will not qualify as a

       3 And as lawyers well know, today’s rules trigger a host of vital deadlines

or consequences based not on when judges render a judgment but when they
sign it (or, sometimes, when that judgment is entered). See, e.g., Tex. R. App. P.
26.1 (making notice of appeal due within 30 days after a judgment is signed);
Tex. R. Civ. P. 510.8(b) (requiring justice courts, in judgments for a plaintiff in
an eviction case, to render judgment “for possession of the premises, costs,
delinquent rent as of the date of entry of judgment, if any, and attorney fees if
recoverable by law”).

                                        7
rendition if it is not publicly announced. See Garza v. Tex. Alcoholic
Beverage Comm’n, 89 S.W.3d 1, 6 (Tex. 2002) (“[A] judgment is rendered
when the decision is officially announced orally in open court, by
memorandum filed with the clerk, or otherwise announced publicly.”).
Likewise, to count as a rendition, the trial court must “indicate[] its intent
to render immediate judgment,” and do so with clarity. Naylor, 466
S.W.3d at 789 (emphasis added). So if the court’s pronouncement, even
if public, does not “clearly indicate that [it] intended to render judgment,”
it simply fails to be a rendition of judgment that binds the parties. S & A
Rest. Corp. v. Leal, 892 S.W.2d 855, 858 (Tex. 1995) (emphasis added).
       Parties can hardly be faulted for worrying about whether
something that looks like a rendition is clear enough, or public enough, or
complete enough, to be a rendition. They should worry about it, because
when a court defectively renders judgment, it can leave the parties in
limbo, or worse. For example, if a court (for any of the reasons listed
above, or more) defectively renders judgment declaring the parties
divorced, the parties cannot know whether they are actually divorced.
The same is true, of course, for other steps. When a court fails to sign a
judgment or appealable order—or signs one without the parties knowing
about it, see, e.g., In re Whataburger Rest., 645 S.W.3d. 188, 192–93 (Tex.
2022)—it may inject risk and uncertainty when parties attempt to
calculate and abide by the relevant timelines for post-judgment motions
and the filing of appeals.
       In so many ways, therefore, our State’s archaic system of
judgment formation can create serious problems.              The problems
transcend substantive ambiguity (“am I divorced, or not?”) because a

                                      8
defect in one step or another can pose jurisdictional consequences, as in
Whataburger.     See id. at 193–94 (mandamus relief required where
appellate jurisdiction was not timely invoked due to the failure to notify
parties of signed order). Circumstances like these can leave parties (and
courts) to question whether a court even has jurisdiction to decide their
case at all. See, e.g., Garza, 89 S.W.3d at 2 (classifying the appeal as
interlocutory and “dismissing the appeal for want of jurisdiction” because
“the district court . . . never signed a judgment affirming the [challenged]
administrative decision”).
      Problems like these waste the appellate courts’ judicial resources,
expand costs to the parties by thousands of dollars, prolong litigation by
months or years, and potentially deprive citizens of their appellate rights
altogether. Such a problem attributable to our system of judgment
formation always presents a great and terrible irony—after all, in early
Texas, the division of judgments facilitated efficient justice. Imagine, for
example, if the law would not resolve even simple disputes for parties in
remote areas until they waited for the judge to travel back to the city,
issue written orders, give them to the clerk, and then send notification
that all of this had happened—with the parties bound only then. What
was meant for good can, as circumstances evolve, turn out for ill.
                                    II
      Our divided system of judgment formation can do real harm, in
other words. The question for today is whether the triad still provides
enough value to compensate for the harm. I doubt it. True, binding
parties at the moment of rendition without requiring a simultaneous
written order still has its benefits, especially where reducing a complex

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judgment to writing may take time.         But this step usually can be
handled expeditiously, and I doubt that the crutch of differentiating
among “rendering,” “signing,” and “entering” a judgment is truly
indispensable in any case. The one we decide today is one of many in
which the current system engenders more confusion than clarity.
       Nor is my observation today particularly novel. In 1976, when
electronic filing or video conferencing were science fiction at best, Justice
Reavley remarked for the Court that “[t]he opportunities for error and
confusion may be minimized if judgments will be rendered only in writing
and signed by the trial judge after careful examination.” Reese v. Piperi,
534 S.W.2d 329, 330 (Tex. 1976). In other words, our judicial system
should take every opportunity to extirpate rather than fertilize confusion.
       Forty-eight years later, previously unimaginable information
technology has created new opportunities for fostering clarity. Courts can
simultaneously render, sign, and enter judgments on the record. Doing
so electronically guarantees that it is done publicly. Given these new
abilities, there is no excuse for not eliminating the “error and confusion,”
id., that inhere in our current system. The judiciary and the legislature
should consider taking up Justice Reavley’s challenge. Better late than
later yet.
       Had we done so already, problems like the one we resolve today
would not arise in the first place. Fixing the problem, however, is not
something that can be done in a contested case like this one that
generates a judicial opinion.     “[W]e do not exercise our rulemaking
authority via judicial opinion.” In re Meador, 968 S.W.2d 346, 351 (Tex.
1998). Instead, it will likely require a variety of revisions to the law

                                     10
governing Texas courts, both in our rules and in various statutes. As I
noted above, many current rules and statutes are tied to a court’s taking
one action or another.4 Some are of extreme importance,5 others are
relatively mundane,6 but all of them would be better if we had a single
moment of general applicability: the moment at which a court’s decision
is electronically added to the public docket. We can address some of this
in our administrative capacity after consultation with the Supreme Court
Advisory Committee, including the participation of other interested
parties. And the legislature can do so after consideration in its normal

       4 So many of the difficult cases arise in the family-law context because

the Family Code contains many provisions that rely on this distinction. See, e.g.,
Tex. Fam. Code § 263.4011 (requiring courts to render a final order within 90
days after the commencement of a suit affecting parent-child relationships); id.
§ 101.026 (defining “render” as “the pronouncement by a judge of the court’s
ruling on a matter” and providing that a court may render judgment by, among
other things, a notation “on the court’s docket sheet or by a separate written
instrument”); id. § 85.041 (requiring courts that have rendered protective orders
to give “to the respondent a copy of the order, reduced to writing and signed by
the judge or master”).
       5 See, e.g., Tex. R. Civ. P. 306a(1) (providing that the court’s plenary

power and the deadline for parties to file post-judgment motions stems from the
date the judgment was signed); Tex. R. App. P. 35.1 (requiring parties to file an
appellate record within 60 days after a judgment is signed); Tex. R. Civ. P. 150
(providing that in cases where a judgment has been rendered, the suit may
proceed to judgment if the cause of action survives a party’s death).
       6 See, e.g., Tex. R. App. P. 24.2(a)(2)(b) (providing that, in cases where a

judgment is for recovery of an interest in personal property, a judgment debtor
must post a bond that is more than the value of the property interest on the date
when the court rendered judgment); Tex. R. Civ. P. 90 (requiring parties in
nonjury cases to specifically point out pleading defects in writing before the
judgment is signed); Tex. Water Code § 55.509 (detailing how courts render
judgments in validation suits and providing that the judgment has res judicata
effect only when entered); Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 51.013 (providing that
writs of error, when available, may be taken at any time within six months after
a final judgment is rendered).

                                       11
process, which would, of course, allow it to either make a wholesale
reform or to do so in stages, if it chooses to act at all.7
       Similar changes—or at least complementary changes—to what I
suggest today have recently been made. In its most recent legislative
session, the legislature passed and Governor Abbott signed a bill that
requires trial and appellate courts to “deliver through the electronic filing
system . . . to all parties in each case in which the use of the electronic
filing system is required or authorized all court orders the court enters
for the case.” Act of May 29, 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., ch. 861, § 18.003,
§ 80.002 (codified at Tex. Gov’t Code § 80.002(b)). This Court recently
enacted amendments to the Texas Rules of Civil and Appellate Procedure
to implement the legislative mandate. Order of September 8, 2023, Misc.
Docket No. 23-9071 (modifying Tex. R. Civ. P. 21, 165a, 246, 298, 299,
299a, and 306a; Tex. R. App. P. 9.2; and Rule 2.7 of the Statewide Rules
Governing Electronic Filing in Criminal Cases).
       The new statute and new rules reflect an effort to create a legal
culture of clarity and notice. This Court has long reiterated and enforced
the overriding value of clarity to ensure that litigation proceeds on its
merits without substantial rights being forfeited through procedural
irregularity. For example, we granted conditional mandamus relief in

       7 Various other statutes may bear reexamining in light of the systemic

changes that I suggest today. Here are just a few possibilities: Tex. Gov’t Code
§ 72.157 (requiring the clerk of the court to “enter” a copy of a protective order
into the registry no later than 24 hours after the court “issues” the order); Tex.
Lab. Code § 102.075 (requiring parties to appeal a judgment entered pursuant
to an arbitration board decision within ten days of when the district court
entered its judgment); Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 42.01 (defining a “judgment”
as “the written declaration of the court signed by the trial judge and entered of
record showing the conviction or acquittal of the defendant”).

                                       12
Whataburger “because the clerk’s failure to give notice of the trial court’s
order” prevented the exercise of relator’s right to appeal. 645 S.W.3d at
194.   The need for that relief arose because the trial judge signed
something, which started a clock—but because nobody knew it, the clock
ran out before the aggrieved party could act. The new statute and rules
should eliminate this sort of trap. Our system would be better and clearer
if the rules were triggered only when the order is in fact electronically
filed. Put another way, the delivery of the orders should be the single
point of their effectiveness, replacing the existing, antiquated medley.
                                 *   *    *
       Our divided system of rendering, signing, and entering judgments
creates far more problems than it solves—and needlessly. In today’s
technological era, we should no longer tolerate this confusing, error-
inducing, and cost-imposing system.            When the rules impose
requirements tethered to rendition, signing, or entering, we should
instead key those requirements to the electronic filing of an order. When
statutes impose such requirements, the legislature could make the
needed changes. I encourage not just the three branches of our state
government but all relevant stakeholders to consider how our system can
be improved along these lines to more effectively administer justice on
behalf of the People of Texas.

                                          Evan A. Young
                                          Justice
OPINION FILED: March 1, 2024

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