Court Opinion

ID: 9691469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:34:32.678229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:20.982704
License: Public Domain

TOM GRAY, Justice,
concurring.
In this case the county court at law, acting in an appellate capacity by reviewing the decision of an administrative law judge, reversed and rendered the ALJ’s decision to suspend Story’s drivers license. The decision to render judgment in favor of Story was because an exhibit considered by the ALJ had been lost and therefore the administrative record was incomplete. When you cut through everything in the Department’s brief and boil it down to the real issue, the issue we must decide is: Did the county court at law, reviewing a judgment of an ALJ to determine if that judgment was supported by substantial evidence, err in determining that due process required that the review be conducted only of a complete record of the proceeding before the ALJ without allowing or requiring correction of that record for a lost exhibit? The answer to this question is: Yes.
A substantial evidence review has never been conducted in this case. Story is entitled to such a review. The Department wants us to conduct that review on the record that they acknowledge was never admitted into evidence before the county court at law. The substantial evidence review of the ALJ’s judgment should be conducted by the county court at law before an appeal to the court of appeals. As much as the Department wants the issues in this appeal to be about the effect of the presence or absence of an exhibit that was before the ALJ but not included in the record available for filing before the county court at law, whose burden it is to get that exhibit before the county court at law, whose burden it is correct the administrative record for a lost exhibit, and how should the record be corrected, if it can be, those issues are simply not properly before us. As much as Story wants the issue in this appeal to be about whether due process will be violated by any substantial evidence review of less than the original and entire record before the ALJ, that issue too is not properly before us.
Whether or how the record will be corrected for the lost exhibit, and the effect upon the substantial evidence review of the record without the exhibit or of a record corrected for the lost exhibit, are questions to which the answers are currently unknown to us because we cannot predict what the form of the record, if any, admitted into evidence before the county court at law will be, or what the county court at law may do as it relates to the record as offered, and the actions it may take on other motions regarding the record before conducting its substantial evidence review. To avoid these questions, the majority elects to make all those decisions for the lower court. We should not.
Specifically I do not join the court in responding to the Department’s invitation to give an advisory opinion. The majority’s discussion in response to the fourth issue is nothing more than advice. It should be readily apparent from the way *600the Department’s issue is framed that it is requesting nothing more than an advisory opinion. The issue asks: “What could, or should, the reviewing court have done.” But the Department went even further to let us know that it really did not expect us to address the fourth issue. The brief under this issue begins: “The Department presents this issue only for discussion. In light of the previous course of this case, we stress that we are not offering this argument as a point of error.” “Under article II, section 1 of the Texas Constitution, courts have no jurisdiction to issue advisory opinions.” Valley Baptist Medical Center v. Gonzalez, 33 S.W.3d 821, 822 (Tex.2000). We should dismiss the Department’s fourth issue without any discussion.
The judgment of the majority is to reverse and remand the case. For the reasons stated, I concur in the judgment but not the reasoning of the majority.