Court Opinion

ID: 9640807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:15:49.248437+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:32.984192
License: Public Domain

BURGESS, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the substantive result of the case, but respectfully dissent to the imposition of a five percent penalty under TEX.R, APP.P. 84.
The majority finds that the appeal was brought “for delay and without sufficient cause.” I do not believe the jurisdictional question had been fully resolved by our Texas courts, and in fact, the trial judge must also have been of that opinion when he stated:
THE COURT: Counsel, I don’t intend to cut you short. I’m going to overrule the Defendant, Mike Ames’ Motion for Instructed Verdict. With regard to this Motion to Dismiss in a written Motion, I have not gone and read these cases, this multitude of cases that you’ve cited in this thing. But, just for the record, and this is worth zero, I think it’s absolutely *481ridiculous that this question appears to be so unclear, even to federal courts, as to what state courts can and cannot do. And, the matter to me, and this may be a serious oversimplification of the problem, is that they probably need to state that state courts cannot hear any matter regarding Employee Retirement Income Security Act cases, period. But, I don’t know whether I have jurisdiction or not. I just want to state that for posterity. I don’t think I’ll ever know. I’m going to overrule the Motion to Dismiss it, and we’ll see what they have to say about this case. We’ll give them another one to write on.
Appellant should not now be penalized when the trial court invited, in a manner of speaking, appellate review. Therefore, I respectfully dissent to the imposition of the penalty.