Court Opinion

ID: 9771655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:50:22.309692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:34.774504
License: Public Domain

HAMBLEN, Chief Justice
(concurring).
The manifest inequity which our decision effects in this' present case compels me to state the unwillingness of my necessary concurrence therein. Our courts have recognized the fact that most if not all notices required by Section 5 of Article 8307,. V.A.T.S., are sent by United States mail. *414It has been held that notice sent by mail is a compliance with the law and that parties have a right to use and rely upon that method of giving notice. Tate v. Standard Accident Ins. Co., Tex.Civ.App., 32 S.W.2d 932, error refused. In the present case we are confronted with a situation wherein a claimant, employing a method of giving notice which is almost universally employed, and which has court approval, deposited the required notice in the mail at a time when, it is conceded, it should have reached the Industrial Accident Board in Austin within the twenty days allowed. For some unexplained reason, but not through fault of appellant, the notice was not filed by the Board until nine days after the expiration of the twenty days allowed. As a result, appellant is denied her day in court.
It is my belief that the Supreme Court, subsequent to those decisions which support this Court’s opinion, has, by the passage of the Rules of Civil Procedure, and particularly Rule 5 thereof, not only recognized and approved the almost universal employment of the United States mails in the conduct of litigation in our courts, but has manifested an intention to provide against the delay whiejh their employment will sometimes, though rarely, bring about. Since by Rule 820, T.R.C.P., the procedural portions of the Workmen’s Compensation Law have been adopted and retained as rules of court, I have undertaken to so construe Rule S, T.R.C.P., as to make its saving provisions applicable to the present case. However, I am unable to say that this original proceeding to set aside an award of the Industrial Accident Board, is a matter relating to the taking an appeal, as that language is used in Rule 5.
In Tate v. Standard Accident Ins. Co., supra, and in Travelers Ins. Co. v. Johnson, Tex.Civ.App., 131 S.W.2d 242, error dismissed, delay in filing was excused, where the mails were employed, upon the proposition that the record affirmatively disclosed that the delay was attributable to fault on the part of the Industrial Accident Board. No such showing is made here. I, therefore, concur in the conclusion reached by the opinion as filed.