Court Opinion

ID: 9768821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:51:49.829693+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:46.965895
License: Public Domain

COLLEY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority. I cannot agree, however, with the majority’s ruling that the Metots preserved their right to complain that “the trial court erred by failing to grant their motion for new trial,” in which motion the Metots alleged that certain negative findings of the jury were against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. Appellee argues, and I think correctly so, that the complaint was not preserved because the Metots did not request that the trial court hear and consider the motion for new trial, or otherwise “direct the court’s attention” thereto.
*289Tex.R.Civ.P. 324(b) (effective April 1, 1984) reads, in part:
MOTION FOR NEW TRIAL REQUIRED. A point in a motion for new trial is a prerequisite to the following points on appeal:
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(2) A complaint of factual insufficiency of the evidence to support a jury finding;
(3) A complaint that a jury finding is against the overwhelming weight of the evidence;
(4) A complaint of inadequacy or ex-cessiveness of the damages found by the jury; or
(5) Incurable jury argument if not otherwise ruled on by the trial court. (Emphasis mine.)
Tex.R.App.P. 52(a) stoutly proclaims that “[i]n order to preserve a complaint for appellate review, a party must have presented to the trial court a timely ... motion. ... If the trial judge refuses to rule, an objection to the court’s refusal to rule is sufficient to preserve the complaint.”
Tex.R.App.P. 54(a) provides that “if a timely motion for new trial ... has been filed by any party, ...” the time for filing the appellate record is extended from 60 days after the judgment in a civil case is signed to 120 days after the judgment is signed. This is true regardless of whether the grounds alleged in the motion are meritorious. To accommodate that procedure, Tex.R.Civ.P. 329b(c) provides that if a motion for new trial “is not determined by written order signed within seventy-five days after the judgment was signed, it shall be considered overruled by operation of law on expiration of that period." Furthermore, Tex.R.Civ.P. 329b(e) grants the trial court plenary power to grant a new trial “until thirty days after ...” a motion for new trial has been overruled, “either by a written and signed order or by operation of law, whichever occurs first.” That provision expands the trial court’s power over its judgments to the extent that a trial court, after becoming aware of the motion, may reverse its denial occasioned by the mere lapse of time and grant a new trial, thus eliminating a needless appeal.
Good sense dictates that no trial judge can be presumed to be cognizant of the existence of a motion for new trial when it is filed only with his clerk, and is not presented to the court nor otherwise called to the judge’s personal attention. I am unwilling to agree with the majority’s decision that the common practice of filing a motion for new trial in a jury-tried case simply to buy time for filing the appellate record suffices to preserve the merits of the motion for appellate review. I am persuaded that such ruling runs afoul of both Tex.R.App.P. 52(a) and sound appellate procedure. Indeed, that ruling raises an important policy question: Why should an appellate court have the authority to reverse a cause for “trial error” never once called to the trial court’s attention for correction?
I strongly believe that Rules 324(b) and 52(a), when read together, require the party filing the motion for new trial to present the motion to the trial court for a ruling5 in order to preserve error, if any, in that ruling for appellate review.

. Thus bringing the trial practice in civil cases in harmony with the rule in criminal cases. See Tex.R.App.P. 31(c), (e)(1), (2).