Court Opinion

ID: 9679412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:52:15.923886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:13.387141
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING
DUNN, Justice.
On its own motion, the Court withdraws its previous order of denial of rehearing and issues the following opinion:
On motion for rehearing, the appellee cites Shaw v. National County Mutual Fire Ins. Co., 723 S.W.2d 236 (Tex.App.— Houston [1st Dist.] 1986, no writ), in support of its contention that only 30 days should be counted as the time in which a response to requests for admissions must be filed.
In this Court’s opinion in Shaw, we determined the due date by counting 30 days from the date on which the request for admissions was “served,” not mailed, because there was only evidence of that “date of service.” The record did not contain a proper certificate of service, showing the date mailed, by the attorney requesting the admissions. There being no indication of the date of mailing, the only reliable evidence acknowledged by both parties was that “service” occurred on October 30.
Rule 21a provides that, if the documents are mailed, time limits are extended by three days from the date mailed. In Shaw, we did not apply this extension because there was no evidence of the date of mailing, to invoke the three-day rule. We thus counted only 30 days from service, per rule 21a. Where the record does not show by proper means, pursuant to rule 21a, the date mailed, the parties may not extend their time limits for response by invoking the three-day rule.
However, in Shaw, even if 33 days had been counted from the acknowledged date of service, October 30, the result would have been the same, i.e. the response was late.
In this case, the record contains evidence of the date of mailing. Therefore, the three-day extension of rule 21a was properly applied.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.