Court Opinion

ID: 9647099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:23:30.618469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:45.530963
License: Public Domain

HUTSON-DUNN, Justice,
concurring to the en banc opinion on motion for rehearing.
Although I agree with the majority of the court on all other issues, I write separately on the issue of the statute of limitations because I disagree with Section E of the opinion.
In points of error three and four, the wife contends that the state wiretap statute, which does not set out a statute of limitations, is governed by the residual limitations provision in TEX.Civ.PRAa & Rem.Code § 16.061 (Vernon 1986), which is four years.
Section 16.051, “Residual Limitations Period,” provides:
Every action for which there is no express limitations period, except an action for the recovery of real property, must be brought not later than four years after the day the cause of action accrues.
(Emphasis added.)
If no provision in any of the limitations statutes expressly applies to a cause of action for wiretap, the cause of action is governed by section 16.051. Williams v. Khalaf, 802 S.W.2d 651, 658 (Tex.1990) (because there was a provision for fraud, it was governed by four-year statute). For example, when a party brings a suit that is a statutory cause of action, even if the suit could be analogized to a common law cause of action, because it is not expressly listed in § 16.051, the four-year residual statute applies. Wider v. First City Bank of Dallas, 804 S.W.2d 160, 162 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1990) (suit against bank for refusal to honor checks was not a suit for debt, it was suit for violation of the UCC, and the limitations was governed by the residual statute).
There is no limitations statute that expressly applies to a wiretap cause of action. In amending the residual limitation provision in 1979, the legislature was charged with knowledge of the holdings of the courts. Williams, 802 S.W.2d at 657. Just as the adoption of section 16.051 changed the period of limitations for fraud from two to four years, that section changed all other periods of limitations for which there is no express limitations period. Nothing in the wiretap statute or in the statutes relating to limitations provides for a limitation period for this type of suit.
*806I would sustain the wife’s points of error three and four and remand to the trial court the issue of damages for violations of the wiretap statute.
OLIVER-PARROTT, C.J., joins HUTSON-DUNN, J., in this concurring opinion.