Court Opinion

ID: 9604819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:27:01.12351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:24.144498
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Justice CARTER.
I concur in the judgment of the court, but write separately to comment on the mandatory requirement of a judicial “statement of the evidence” when a court reporter’s record exists.
Byrnes v. Sampson, 74 Tex. 79, 11 S.W. 1073 (1889), was one of the first cases to interpret the statement of evidence as a mandatory requirement. The court held that, in suits of this character, there must be strict compliance with the essential requirements of the statute. Id. at 1075. One of the requirements was for the court to “make out and incorporate with the records of the case a statement of the facts proven on which the judgment was founded.” Id. Similarly, Tex.R. Civ. P. 244 re*448quires that a “statement of the evidence, approved and signed by the judge, shall be filed with the papers of the cause.... ” The court in Byrnes found the object of this requirement was “that upon a review ... it may be determined whether the judgment was authorized by the facts established on the trial.” Byrnes, 11 S.W. at 1075; McLane v. Kirby & Smith, 54 Tex.Civ.App. 113, 116 S.W. 118 (1909, no writ), cites the Byrnes case for the proposition that the appointment of an attorney to defend the suit for the nonresident does not dispense with the necessity or requirement to file a statement of evidence, and failure to do so is reversible error.
When the court reporter has made a full record of all the evidence, the purposes of this requirement — to protect the defendant and to ensure the judgment is adequately supported by competent evidence — have been fully met. The additional statement of the evidence is of little or no real value. In this case, a complete reporter’s record was made and is presently before us. We could review that record to determine if the evidence meets the proper legal requirements to support this judgment. To reverse this case for a lack of a statement of evidence elevates form over substance. Only in this unique circumstance is a court “statement of evidence” even considered as a proper record of the evidence. See Bertsch & Co. v. Spells, 687 S.W.2d 826 (Tex.App.-Eastland 1985, writ ref'd n.r.e.).
In Byrnes, the court, while announcing this mandatory rule, reviewed the “only evidence,” a deposition, and found it to be insufficient to support the judgment. The further holding that the court’s “statement of evidence” was mandatory was unnecessary. I urge a reconsideration of this requirement, either by amendment to the rule or its interpretation. It is nonsensical that we must reverse a case for the stated reason that we do not a have “statement of evidence” when every word of the evidence presented is before us.