Court Opinion

ID: 9662904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:21:45.263819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:43.735201
License: Public Domain

TERRIE LIVINGSTON, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to Part V of the majority opinion, which relates only to Dr. Dingler’s appeal. In all other respects, I join the majority decision.
I believe that once Dr. Dingier became a party to the suit — when he was served with citation — he was served with the expert report that same day because the attorneys who actually represent him in this litigation had already been served with the report on behalf of Nocona. While Dr. Dingier was not an actual “party” to the suit until June 11, 2008, when he was finally served with citation, the service of the expert report on Nocona’s and Dr. Dingler’s mutual attorneys, which had occurred previously, ripened as to Dr. Dingier on the day he became a party.1 In other words, as to Dr. Dingier, it was a prematurely served report, but once service on Dr. Dingier was perfected, so too *772was service of the expert report. Furthermore, Dr. Dingier was a named defendant from the beginning of the suit so that the preclaim fact patterns that occurred in Carrick v. Summers and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital v. Poland do not apply. Carrick, 294 S.W.3d 886, 889-91 (Tex.App.-Beaumont 2009, no pet.); Poland, 288 S.W.3d 38, 43-44 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2009, pet. filed).2
Because the expert report was timely served, I do not believe Dr. Dingier should be dismissed from the suit. To hold otherwise allows the plaintiff no time after service of the suit on a later-served party within which to serve an expert report, which would result in a plaintiffs loss of access to the courts as to that potential defendant. See Tex. Const, art. I, § 13; Gard v. Bandera County Appraisal Dist., 293 S.W.3d 613, 618-19 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2009, no pet.). Furthermore, we should not adopt a policy that rewards a potential defendant who is good at evading service of citation for more than the first 120 days after a suit is filed.
Therefore, I would conclude and hold that the duty to serve the report cannot begin to run until the particular defendant has been made a party and, in this particular case, would hold that Dr. Dingler’s counsel was timely served with the expert report.

. Nocona accepted service of citation by certified mail, but Dr. Dingier did not, and it took over 120 days to serve him personally.

. The Tuckers filed suit against Dr. Dingler and Nocona on November 5, 2007. They served Nocona by certified mail on November 6, 2007, and Nocona filed its answer on November 26, 2007, the same day that the Tuckers served their expert report on its attorney. The attempted service by certified mail on Dr. Dingier was returned by the post office marked "unclaimed” after several attempts to serve it. Dr. Dingier was finally served with citation by personal sendee on June 11, 2008.