Court Opinion

ID: 9517036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:01:56.669154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:07.965256
License: Public Domain

TOM GRAY, Chief Justice,
concurring.
The problems with the majority opinion begin with the style and run to its conclusion. Amazingly, the problems do not result in an improper judgment.
Parties to the Appeal
A quick check of the docketing statement reflects that the appeal also includes Appellees Baptist Community Services, Tim Holloway, Gerald Esterling and the Guadalupe Family Trust. The failure to include these additional parties and to appreciate the impact of their omission will be discussed later.
Claim-by-Claim Analysis
The most important holding of the majority opinion is obscured by the failure to construct the analysis and judgment on that holding. The holding is that a specific jurisdiction analysis must be performed on a claim-by-claim basis. The discussion related to this holding begins with the head-*771mg of “Causes of Action” on page 10 of the opinion. Op. pg. 766. This holding necessarily applies to both prongs of the requirements for specific jurisdiction.
Unfortunately, this holding comes in the middle of the majority’s efforts to conduct its specific jurisdiction analysis which began back on page 763 of the majority opinion. Thus, by conducting the first prong analysis before its determination that we must conduct a claim-by-claim analysis, the majority’s analysis of the first prong lumps all the jurisdictional acts together purportedly “to more efficiently analyze the issue of jurisdiction.” Id. Efficiency would be best served by identifying each claim and isolating the jurisdictional acts that relate to that claim. The majority’s analysis fails to distinguish any jurisdictional act as relating to a specific claim.
So as a result of the structure of the majority opinion, instead of applying the holding to each claim, the holding is only applied to the second prong of the specific jurisdiction analysis. This is only evident after a careful analysis of the majority opinion. It is error. This error, in most circumstances, will have consequences.
The most obvious example in this appeal of the consequence of the majority’s error that could have affected this appeal is the determination that, on the facts of this case, Texas has personal jurisdiction of Barnhill on the claim for fraudulent inducement brought by Mr. Williams. The only jurisdictional act of Barnhill was sending a resume, at Williams’s request, into Texas.
Under the analysis laid out for us in Michiana, this is an inadequate act to meet the first prong of the specific jurisdiction test. Michiana Easy Livin’ Country Inc. v. Holten, 168 S.W.3d 777, 794 (Tex.2005). Barnhill, by this act, did not seek to avail himself of any aspect of benefit or protection of Texas law. Rather, he was responding to an inquiry from a Texas resident who had sought him out in Georgia, much like Michiana’s response to a Texas resident about the purchase of a motor home. Id.
And further, under the analysis laid out for us in Moki Mac, I have some grave reservations about whether the tort claim, fraudulent inducement, “arises out of’ this single act of mailing the resume to Texas. See Moki Mac River Expeditions v. Drugg, No. 04-0432, 2007 Tex. LEXIS 188, 2007 WL 623805 (Tex. March 2, 2007). This is the only jurisdictional act “in Texas” related to this claim against Barnhill. I do not believe the exercise of personal jurisdiction over Barnhill could be constitutionally maintained in Texas based upon this single act. This is the type of analysis that should be done on each claim by each party against Barnhill, rather than lumping all the jurisdictional acts together, to evaluate both prongs of the specific jurisdiction analysis on a claim-by-claim basis.
Further, the majority’s discussion also vacillates from the principles and characteristics for an analysis of specific jurisdiction to the principles and characteristics for general jurisdiction. In the course of this vacillation the analysis sometimes applies principles applicable to general jurisdiction to the specific jurisdiction analysis or erroneously conflates the elements of the two prong specific jurisdiction analysis.
Omitted Parties
The majority’s failure to conduct a proper claim-by-claim analysis is highlighted in its failure to even identify all the parties to the appeal, and thus omits any analysis of personal jurisdiction over Barnhill on some of the claims pending against him. As noted above, the style of the appeal used by the majority does not properly identify all the parties to the appeal. When I made this observation, it became evident to me that the majority had failed to conduct the very analysis, claim-by-claim, that the ma*772jority is holding must be applied for a specific jurisdiction analysis. My examination of the pleadings to identify all of the parties and claims pending against Barn-hill did, however, lead me to a startling discovery that should be where the majority opinion and this appeal stopped.
Special AppeaRance to What Claims?
An integral intellectual aspect of a claim-by-claim analysis is that there must be a special appearance filed that actually challenges personal jurisdiction as to each claim made against the person who is asserting the absence of personal jurisdiction. As I scoured the record to identify each claim so that I could conduct, or review, a claim-by-claim analysis, I also pulled the special appearance filed by Barnhill. It was then that I discovered the only special appearance in the record before us was filed in response to the claims of Automated Shrimp Corporation against Barnhill. The pleading in which those claims were made was amended pri- or to the 120a hearing.1 The live pleadings which assert claims against Barnhill include claims of persons and entities other than Automated Shrimp Corporation. Barnhill has not filed a special appearance in response to these claims. Because the only special appearance before us is to claims that have been abandoned by the failure to include them in the amended pleadings against Barnhill, the trial court could not have erred in the denial of the special appearance.
The fact that the claims of some parties against Barnhill are not even evaluated by the majority in its purported claim-by-claim analysis spot-lights why Barnhill’s special appearance and the majority’s analysis entirely miss the mark. Because a trial court’s judgment can be affirmed on any basis finding support in the record, and because Barnhill has not challenged jurisdiction over him on any claim that is pending against him, the trial court could not have erred in denying the special appearance brought only against claims that are no longer pending against Barnhill. For this reason, the trial court’s order overruling the special appearance of Barn-hill made in response to the claims of Automated Shrimp Corporation should be affirmed.

. Actually, this was the second hearing on the 120a motion. After the first hearing, the trial court granted the 120a special appearance. At that time, the claims filed by Automated Shrimp against Barnhill were still pending. After the pleadings were amended, the 120a issue was again presented to the trial court, at which time the trial court denied the 120a special appearance filed by Barnhill.