Court Opinion

ID: 9779413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:50:06.128512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:26.236549
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
K & S Interests filed its appeal bond February 20, 1987. The parties appeared before us and argued on January 26, 1988. Our opinion issued February 17, 1988. Simultaneous with the filing of its motion for rehearing on March 3, 1988, K & S Interests filed its motion to supplement the record on appeal to cure jurisdictional defect relating to finality of judgment. By its motion to supplement, K & S Interests seeks to now place into the record the following: (1) an order dated May 29, 1987, entered by the trial court in this cause; (2) an affidavit of a deputy clerk of the civil process section, Dallas County district clerk’s office; and (3) a copy of a March 3, 1988, letter to the district clerk, Mr. Bill Long, Attn: Mr. Russell Goodell. The import of the requested supplementation of the record is to establish the contents of the trial court’s May 29, 1987, order and to establish that no portion of the trial court’s file was ever transferred to Harris County pursuant to the order directing transfer. The tendered trial court’s order of May 29, 1987, reads as follows:
Pursuant to Dallas Civil Court Rule 1.23, all claims pending in the above entitled and numbered cause are Dismissed with Prejudice.
Costs are taxed against party incurring same. Let Execution Issue.
Hence, K & S Interests now argues that the result of the May 29, 1987, order is to make the January 27, 1987, order a final judgment so as to give this court jurisdiction.
In this regard, we note the proper and legitimate function of a motion for rehearing. The function of a motion for rehearing is to present to the court the errors of law which have been committed by the court, in the opinion of the movant, together with such argument, authorities, and statements from the record which may, in the opinion of such movant, support the motion. Dewey v. American National Bank, 382 S.W.2d 524, 528 (Tex.Civ.App.— Amarillo 1964) (on rehearing), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 821, 86 S.Ct. 49, 15 L.Ed. 67 (1965). We recognize that Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure 55(b) and (c) grant this court wide discretion to supplement the transcript or statement of facts so as to include omitted matter. See Archer v. Storm Nursery, Inc., 512 S.W.2d 82, 85 (Tex.Civ.App. — San Antonio 1974, no writ) (on rehearing) (citing to repealed rules 428 and 429 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure). However, such discretion should not be exercised, in the absence of some unusual circumstance, so as to permit new material to be filed after the appellate court has written its opinion and rendered its judgment. Such action would be con*892trary to the spirit and purpose of Rules 54(a) (setting forth the appellate timetable) and 50(d) (placing the burden on appellant to see that a sufficient record is presented to show error requiring reversal) and would interfere with the orderly administration of justice. See Archer, 512 S.W.2d at 85 (emphasis added) (citing to repealed rules 386 and 413 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure).
K & S Interests seeks to establish some unusual circumstance by affidavit of its attorney, Jeffrey Hubbard, attached to its memorandum in support of motion to supplement record on appeal to cure jurisdictional defect relating to finality of judgment. Hubbard’s affidavit is not a part of the record in this case, nor is it a part of the tendered supplement to the record. We quote the following excerpt from Hubbard’s affidavit:
While, until preparation of the Appellant’s brief in this cause, this lawsuit was actually conducted by Mr. James Karel, a young associate in the firm of Margraves & Schueler, still, all correspondence in connection with same was actually received by me. I first received a copy of the Order dated May 29, 1987 on February 23, 1988, after and in response to a request for same from the Office of the District Clerk of Dallas County, Texas made on February 19,1988. I learned of the existence of the Order as a result of a conversation on February 19,1988 with the Clerk’s office in connection with the preparation of a response brief to Appel-lee’s postsubmission brief in this cause. A careful review of the firm’s file of the case, of which I am the custodian, fails to reflect any prior notification to anyone at Margraves & Schueler from anyone as to the existence of the Order or contents thereof. Margraves & Schueler, in the course of its regularly conducted business activity of representing clients in litigation, maintains a file for each such client and it is the regular practice of the firm to maintain in said file all writings in connection therewith, including those consisting of correspondence and orders received from a court or the clerk thereof. All such correspondence, including letters, pleadings, motions, requests for discovery, orders and judgments would be received by me personally and then placed in the file by a secretary, after which the file would be available to the associate attorney.
Thus, K & S Interests maintains that it had no notice of the trial court’s May 29, 1987, order until after this court’s opinion issued. For the purposes of this opinion, we assume, but do not decide, that the contents of the Hubbard affidavit are properly before us.
Nevertheless, we conclude that Hubbard’s affidavit fails to establish the requisite unusual circumstance. We reach this conclusion because K & S Interests had notice as a matter of law of the May 29, 1987, order. A party to a suit is charged by law with notice of all orders and judgments rendered therein. Swaim v. Texas Electric Service Co., 590 S.W.2d 788, 789 (Tex.Civ.App. — Fort Worth 1979, writ ref’d n.r.e.). The traditional rule has been that once a trial court properly gains jurisdiction over a party, that party is expected to keep himself informed of the proceedings and judgment rendered in the case. Thomason v. Freberg, 588 S.W.2d 821, 825 (Tex.Civ.App. — Corpus Christi 1979, no writ). Therefore, as a matter of law K & S Interests had notice of the May 29, 1987, order and was, therefore, obligated to call the order to our attention before our opinion issued. We deny K & S Interests’ motion to supplement the record. We overrule K & S Interests’ motion for rehearing.