Court Opinion

ID: 9649112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:42:40.841224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:07.850362
License: Public Domain

JOHN HILL,
dissenting (Assigned).
I respectfully dissent because the 1985 judgment is interlocutory since there is an irreconcilable conflict between the amount the court awarded to individual claimants and the amount the court intended to award the claimants as a group.
The majority relies upon several courts of appeals opinions holding that the court’s recitals preceding the decretal portions of the judgment do not determine the rights *533and interests of the parties, and that recitals preceding the decretal portion of a judgment form no part of the judgment rendered. I do not deny that the opinions hold as the majority states and that the majority’s opinion is correct if those authorities are correct.
However, the Texas Supreme Court has on more than one occasion stated that courts are to construe decrees as a whole toward the end of harmonizing and giving effect to all that is written; and that courts are not to give conclusive effect to the judgment’s use or omission of commonly-employed decretal words, but should instead determine what the trial court adjudicated from a fair reading of all the judgment’s provisions. See Wilde v. Murchie, 949 S.W.2d 381, 333 (Tex.1997). See also Constance v. Constance, 544 S.W.2d 659, 660 (Tex.1977). I find these holdings to be in conflict with the majority’s authorities and their conclusion that, in construing the 1985 judgment, the portion preceding the decretal portion of the judgment is to be disregarded.
The majority’s conclusion that the amount on which a clerk would issue execution is clear is based upon the assumption that the clerk is construing the judgment in accordance with its courts of appeals authorities, not by considering the full judgment, disregarding decretal language, as required by the Texas Supreme Court. I would hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by construing the judgment in light of all of its terms and determining it is ambiguous, and, therefore, interlocutory. I would therefore deny the relator’s petition for mandamus.