Court Opinion

ID: 9778767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:19:52.013073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:12.984093
License: Public Domain

REYNOLDS, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the overruling of Hicks’ motion for rehearing; but I do not agree, as the majority holds in addressing Hicks’ rehearing points of error two through four, that Cox v. Nelson, 223 S.W.2d 84 (Tex.Civ. App.—Texarkana 1949, writ ref’d), is no longer controlling authority for interpreting the interplay between sections 34.001 and 31.006 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Annotated (Vernon 1986). I remain convinced, as we agreed in our original opinion, that the Cox court’s resolution of the conflict between former articles 3773 and 5532 of the Texas Revised Civil Statutes Annotated (repealed 1985), subsists as the resolution of the same conflict carried forward in the revised versions of the articles as sections 34.001 and 31.-006, respectively.
Some thirty-six years elapsed from the time the Cox court announced, essentially as a matter of statutory construction, the resolution of the conflict between articles 3773 and 5532 until the Legislature ordered in 1985 the revision of statutory law, which replaced articles 3773 and 5532 with sections 34.001 and 31.006, respectively. During those thirty-six years before the 1985 revision, some eighteen regular legislative sessions were held without legislative disapproval of the construction accorded the articles. Thus, we are entitled to assume that the Legislature approved that construction. Allen Sales & Servicenter, Inc. v. Ryan, 525 S.W.2d 863, 866 (Tex.1975).
The 1985 codification of articles 3773 and 5532 as sections 34.001 and 31.006, respectively, did not operate to change the substantive law settled by Cox. The codification was a revision by the Legislature in contemplation of the “revision of the state’s general and permanent statute law without substantive change.” Tex.Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 1.001(a) (Vernon 1986). Indeed, the Legislature specifically expressed the intent of its revision “as a recodification only, and no substantive change in the law is intended by this Act.” Act of April 16, 1985, ch. 959, § 10, 1985 Tex.Gen.Laws 3242, 3322. And, to enforce its intent, the Legislature pointedly provid*105ed, in enacting the Code Construction Act, that the repeal and reenactment of a statute in the continuing statutory revision program does not affect “the prior operation of the statute or any prior action taken under it.” Tex.Gov’t Code Ann. § 311.031(a)(1) (Vernon 1988). See, also, Johnson v. City of Fort Worth, 774 S.W.2d 653, 654-55 (Tex.1989).
Accordingly, I would hold, as we originally did, that Cox is still authority for holding that section 34.001, not section 31.006, controls the time a judgment becomes dormant.