Court Opinion

ID: 9661326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:35:38.35322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:27.214965
License: Public Domain

FOWLER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of the court but I write separately to make two specific points. First, I agree that Howell v. Murray Mortgage Co. misstated the holding in McConnell v. Southside Independent Sch. District when it concluded that McConnell would allow grounds not contained in a motion for summary judgment, but only incorporated by *573reference, to be considered in support of the motion. Howell v. Murray Mortgage Co., 890 S.W.2d 78, 85 (Tex.App.—Amarillo 1994, writ denied); McConnell v. Southside Independent Sch. District, 858 S.W.2d 337 (Tex. 1993). McConnell was crystal clear that this could not happen. McConnell, 858 S.W.2d at 341. However, I do not agree that the result in Howell is contrary to McConnell. The issue in McConnell was whether a court could consider grounds in support of a motion for summary judgment when those grounds were contained in a separate document or contained in evidence attached to the summary judgment motion. McConnell, 858 S.W.2d at 338. The Supreme Court clearly held that a “motion must stand or fall on the grounds expressly presented in the motion” and they cannot be incorporated by reference. Id. at 341. The issue in Howell was whether the court could consider grounds contained in the same document as the motion but placed under a different-numbered paragraph than the paragraph containing the motion. Howell, 890 S.W.2d at 85. Clearly Howell & McConnell did not involve the same situations and McConnell did not address the Howell situation.
In short, in my opinion, the Howell court reached the right result, but gave wrong reasons for reaching the holding.1 Regardless of the accuracy of Howell’s language, the opinion has no significance to the appeal before this Court because this appeal involves a McConnell situation—grounds and defenses not contained in the motion and discussed only in a separate document from the motion.
The second reason I write separately is to emphasize what our holding does and does not do. It does not hold that the defenses raised in the brief accompanying the motion for summary judgment are invalid. As noted in the opinion, we specifically did not, and could not, consider these defenses because they were not properly before the court. The opinion does hold that the notes were usurious on their faces and therefore ORIX could not prevail on its claim that they were not usurious on their face.

. Part of the problem with Howell is that its use of the word "incorporated” is confusing. The opinion says that the grounds in support of the motion in Howell could be considered because the motion "incorporated the brief which contained the grounds in support of the summary judgment,” meaning that the brief and its grounds were contained in the motion, not incorporated by reference. The opinion uses the word "incorporated” not only when it means "contained within" but also when it means incorporated by reference, and this is why the opinion is misleading and sometimes incorrect.