Court Opinion

ID: 9643344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:26:33.843821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:17:43.318295
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
In their Motion for Rehearing appellees insist that the case at bar was dismissed by the trial court for want of diligence in prosecution and not for appellants’ failure to amend as recited in the court’s judgment. They call this Court’s attention to that portion of the judgment wherein the Court states:
“ * * * and the plaintiff’s having wholly failed and refused to amend said Pleadings, and that no cause of action remains on the pleadings; the court is of the opinion that said cause should be dismissed.”
This Court is not bound by any reason given by the trial court in support of his judgment and if such judgment is sustainable for any reason, ordinarily, this Court is under the duty to affirm. See Maher v. Gonzalez, Tex.Civ.App., 380 S. W.2d 764. For this reason we discuss appellants’ point of dismissal for lack of prosecution.
 In Bevil v. Johnson, 157 Tex. 621, 307 S.W.2d 85, our Supreme Court held that in dismissing a case for want of prosecution, the question is whether there was a clear abuse of discretion by the trial court and that question is one of law. Here the Court held that a dismissal for failure to prosecute a motion for new trial for more than eight years was not an abuse of discretion.
We believe, and so hold, that in the case at bar a dismissal for want of prosecution would have been a clear abuse of discretion.
As stated above, appellants’ petition was filed during the summer of 1962. The petition was amended and in September of 1962, the court sustained the special exceptions set out above. Appellants did not amend and in June of 1964, the trial court granted appellees’ motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case.
Appellees’ motion for summary judgment was filed May 20, 1964. Appellants answered this motion the same being filed June 18, 1964. Appellants’ answer was accompanied by an affidavit of appellants’ attorney, who practices law in Houston, Texas, stating his desire to bring the case to trial, that since the filing of the suit, he has been busily engaged and unable to request a setting; that there had been no efforts on the part of the appellees herein to bring the case to trial.
In the Bevil case cited above the Supreme Court stated the rule announced in Callahan v. Staples, 139 Tex. 8, 161 S.W.2d 489, as follows:
“Such rule as so developed and applied may be explained in these words: Where the defendant in a suit is called to answer and has responded to the call, the duty devolves on the plaintiff to proceed in prosecuting the suit to a conclusion with reasonable diligence, and whenever a' delay of an unreasonable duration occurs, such delay, if not sufficiently explained, will raise a conclusive presumption of *469abandonment of the plaintiffs suit, and a discontinuance results.”
We hold that the delay of appellants in asking for a setting under the facts of this case was not unreasonable and that their explanation for such delay was sufficient to maintain the suit on the docket for such other disposition as the court may have seen fit.
Motion overruled.