Court Opinion

ID: 9677287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:48:24.815197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:54.972080
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
GUITTARD, Chief Justice.
In this motion for rehearing Joiner insists that the rule that a judgment valid on its face is not void and subject to collateral attack for lack of service does not apply to judgments against nonresidents because of due process requirements. He cites Hodges, “Collateral Attack on Judgments,” 41 Tex.L.Rev. 499, 505-518 (1963). Professor Hodges points out that due process may require an exception to this rule in the case of nonresidents, but he recognizes that a collateral attack may be barred by the res judicata effect of an intervening judgment. Id. at 526.
Under such an exception, the juvenile court may have erred in the first bill of review, but that error cannot avail in this third bill of review. The termination decree did not reveal on its face any lack of personal jurisdiction. Such a lack was a matter of fact and could only be established by evidence. Joiner undertook to make that proof in his first bill of review, but the court declined to give him relief on that ground, and he failed to appeal. Although the termination decree may have been void for lack of jurisdiction over his person, the judgment in the first bill of review was not void, since he appeared and invoked the court’s jurisdiction to determine whether it had jurisdiction of the termination action. The first bill of review judgment, though possibly erroneous, was valid in the jurisdictional sense, and Joiner’s remedy was to appeal. Instead, he brought another bill of review on the same grounds, and, when relief was again denied, he brought a third, although he has never made any proper attack on the judgment in the first bill of review. If unsuccessful again, he may attempt a fourth, and so on, contending each time, as he does here, that no binding judgment can be rendered until he is finally heard on the merits of the original termination action.
None of the authorities cited tend, even remotely, to support such a contention. The issue of service of process, like any other issue of fact, may be settled by a judgment in a contested proceeding under the principle stated in Restatement of Judgments Section 9 (1941) that a party is bound by an adjudication of the court’s jurisdiction in a contested proceeding. The application of this principle to nonresidents is illustrated by authorities holding that Texas courts are bound by determinations of personal jurisdiction by foreign courts in cases where Texas residents have appeared in the foreign court and contested jurisdiction. Moody v. First National Bank of Dona Ana County, 530 S.W.2d 879, 881-82 (Tex.Civ.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1975, writ ref’d n. r. e.), following Durfee v. Duke, 375 U.S. 106, 84 S.Ct. 242, 11 L.Ed.2d 186 (1963). The same rule has been applied to a jurisdictional determination by a foreign court in proceedings concerning the support and custody of children. Kellogg v. Kellogg, 559 S.W.2d 126, 128 (Tex.Civ.App.—Texarkana 1977, no writ); Layton v. Layton, 538 S.W.2d 642, 647-48 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio 1976, writ ref’d n. r. e.). If a Texas court is bound by such a jurisdictional determination of a foreign court, then, on the same principle, a Texas court is bound by its own determination of jurisdiction in an earlier proceeding in which the nonresident appeared and contested the jurisdiction of the Texas court.
We do not hold that a nonresident defendant is bound by the recitals of service in a judgment and cannot attack it by extrinsic evidence showing lack of proper service. We do hold that having made an attack on that ground and failed, he may not make another.
Joiner seeks to avoid the bar of res judicata on the ground that the present proceeding is a collateral as well as a direct attack on the termination decree. He gains nothing by labeling the proceeding a collateral attack. Res judicata applies whether *761the earlier attack was direct or collateral. See McGhee v. Romatka, 92 Tex. 38, 45 S.W. 552, 554 (Tex.Cr.App.1898) (collateral attack following direct attack); Cheney v. Norton, 181 S.W.2d 835, 836 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1944, writ ref’d) (collateral attack following bill of review treated as collateral attack for want of necessary parties); “56” Petroleum Corp. v. Rodden, 98 S.W.2d 269, 270 (Tex.Civ.App.—Texarkana 1936, no writ) (direct attack following collateral attack). In McGhee v. Romatka, supra, the supreme court held that a collateral attack in a subsequent suit for title to land was barred by the denial in the former suit of a motion for new trial alleging the same ground subsequently alleged. The court commented that if the earlier decision was erroneous, the losing party should have had it set aside.
We know of no ground for avoiding a judgment that may be urged by collateral attack but not by direct attack. When the ground for avoiding the earlier judgment is lack of service of process, the party seeking relief need not show, as in the usual bill of review, that he was prevented from making his defense to the original suit by fraud, accident, or wrongful act of the opposing party. Texas Industries, Inc. v. Sanchez, 525 S.W.2d 870, 871 (Tex.1975). We need not determine whether Joiner was required in the first bill of review to prove a meritorious defense to the termination suit because even if the court erred in requiring him to do so, he is bound by the judgment denying the bill of review, since he made no effort to set that judgment aside by appeal. McGhee v. Romatka, supra. Consequently, we hold that the judgment in the first bill of review is a conclusive bar to the present suit.
We are not justified in disregarding these established principles on the ground that errors in the original termination suit and in the first bill of review will have an adverse effect on the welfare of the children. If final judgments are subject to review in subsequent proceedings on issues relating to the merits, but not specifically decided in the original suit, then litigation would never end until every new theory of fact and law advanced by resourceful counsel or his successor is fully explored and expressly determined. Although occasionally ideal justice may be more nearly attained as the result of a second trial, we must assume that in the great majority of cases the original judgment is proper and that subsequent proceedings would impose an intolerable burden of meritless litigation. The doctrine of res judicata, therefore, is not a mere rule of convenience that may be disregarded on later proof that justice was not done.
These principles apply with particular force to decrees terminating parental rights. Finality is even more important for a termination decree, which is intended to be final, than to a custody order, such as that in Ogletree v. Crates, 363 S.W.2d 431 (Tex.1963), which is subject to modification. If a termination decree may be reviewed on the ground that the merits were never finally decided because the interests of the children were not properly considered, then innumerable termination decrees would be subject to similar attacks. Although we may assume that most such attacks would fail, nevertheless, the unavailability of a plea of res judicata to cut short such attacks would cause incalculable burdens and misery for both parents and children. Consequently, we cannot be swayed by emotionally appealing arguments that such decrees fall into a special category to which the usual principles of finality of judgments do not apply. We adhere to the views stated in our original opinion.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.
AKIN, STEPHENS and GUILLOT, JJ., dissent.