Court Opinion

ID: 9622435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:17:39.466055+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:16.605345
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I do not believe the legislature intended to preclude appeal by a party who has done everything required under the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, just because the trial court failed to meet its responsibilities. (Here, quite deliberately and knowingly failed to meet those responsibilities, as the colloquy quoted by the majority makes clear.)
This court addressed an analogous situation in Lopez v. Lopez,1 a decision where an associate judge granted Rosalinda Lopez a protective order against Martin Lopez, found a common law marriage between the parties, and granted Ms. Lopez spousal support.2 Mr. Lopez attempted an appeal from the decision of the associate judge to the district court under Tex.Fam. Code Ann. § 201.015(f)(Vernon Supp.2000), which provides:
The referring court, after notice to the parties, shall hold a hearing on all appeals not later than the 30th day after the date on which the initial appeal was filed with the referring court.
The district court failed to hold a hearing before the deadline. Ms. Lopez argued that the language was mandatory and jurisdictional and that both the district court, and by extension this court, had lost jurisdiction when the thirty days expired. We agreed that a hearing was mandatory, but disagreed that failure to hold a hearing within thirty days deprived the district court of jurisdiction. We interpreted the requirement as:
*169[A] mandate upon the referring [district] court to promptly resolve appeals from the rulings of associate judges. This does not mean that the court loses jurisdiction if it fails to hold a hearing within the required time period; rather, it allows the parties to mandamus a prompt hearing after the 30 day deadline expires.3
I believe the same interpretation should apply here, and for the same reasons. The legislature clearly intended the 10-day deadline of TexAlco.Bev.Code Ann. § 11.67 to insure a prompt trial of the issues. Where the trial court refuses to comply with the legislative mandate, the remedy should be mandamus of the recalcitrant court, not deprivation of the right to appeal.
Although the Alcoholic Beverage Code contains language that its requirements “be construed literally,” I do not view literal construction as necessarily depriving a litigant of their properly perfected appeal to the trial court. A literal construction of the requirement that “the case shall be tried before a judge within 10 days from the date it is filed” would more logically result in a mandate from a higher court, to the trial court, that the hearing be held immediately as required by the Code. This makes much more sense than punishing a party who is otherwise powerless to enforce its appellate rights. I believe our reasoning in Lopez should apply here.
For these reasons, I dissent.

. 995 S.W.2d 896, 897 (Tex.App.—El Paso 1999, no pet.).

. Id. at 896.

. Id. at 897 (emphasis in original).