Court Opinion

ID: 9748845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:15:22.944435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:39.906612
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Chief Justice MORRISS.
I concur with the majority opinion, though there is authority the Texas Su*913preme Court could employ to give Doan her day in court.
The principal authority for the proposition that the Open Courts provision is violated when a legislative enactment makes a remedy contingent on an impossible condition is Nelson v. Krusen, 678 S.W.2d 918, 921-24 (Tex.1984). In reviewing the precedents developing the rule, Nelson included some fact patterns that, to be precise, did not present the truly impossible, but merely the practically impossible or effectively impossible, given the particular situation of the plaintiff whose cause of action hung in the balance — analyzing each fact situation from the point of view of the plaintiff.
One such case was Dillingham v. Putnam, 109 Tex. 1, 14 S.W. 303 (1890). That case ruled that requiring a supersedeas bond, as a condition to appeal, from one ■without the means to purchase one was a practical impossibility and, thus, an unconstitutional statute. Id. at 305. It should ■be noted that bonds are posted regularly, often by people without the personal means to purchase them, by making arrangements with family or friends. Once her attorney died, Doan had no ability to personally serve an expert report or to get anyone else to give it, because of her lack of knowledge of the death of her attorney. Therefore, to her, once her attorney died, it was practically impossible to serve an expert report on the defense.
Another case discussed by Nelson was Hanks v. City of Port Arthur, 121 Tex. 202, 48 S.W.2d 944 (1932). Hanks invalidated a city ordinance that required twenty-four-hour advance notice of a street defect before an accident caused by that defect was actionable. The court reasoned that it imposed “an unreasonable condition precedent to recovery” to require a notice from someone who did not know of the information to be noticed, thus declaring the notice provision unconstitutional. Id. at 948. Similarly, Doan did not know of the death of her attorney, so requiring her, the only person to have authority to take any action on her behalf in the lawsuit, to perform a function she. had no reason to know she must perform, can be argued “to impose' an unreasonable condition precedent to recovery ... beyond the legislative power.” See id.
Nelson, thus, reasoned that the Open Courts provision is violated by requiring one to take an action he or she did not know was required and should not reasonably have known was required. Nelson, 678 S.W.2d at 922. Nelson considered how onerous the provision was when it questioned whether the Nelsons’ burden was “any less onerous than requiring a party to sue where there are no courts? See H. Runge & Co. v. Wyatt, 25 Tex. (Supp.) 291 (I860).” Nelson also considered the perceived arbitrariness of the statutory condition, citing Dillingham. Citing the Hanks case, Nelson also considered the lack of knowledge of the plaintiff, finding there that the lack of knowledge set up an “impossible requirement.”
Here, like the situation in Nelson, this statutory provision would require Doan, once her attorney died, to do the practically impossible — to serve an expert report within approximately the last three weeks before the statutory deadline, although she did not know and had no reason to know of her attorney’s death. Given the statutorily decreed 120-day period for serving an expert report and her attorney’s death with about twenty days left in that period, it is onerous and arbitrary to require Doan to have served her expert report thereafter, notwithstanding her lack of knowledge about the situation and notwithstanding the fact that she was the only person in the world who had the authority to take the action before the deadline. Thus, as *914applied to Doan, an unknowingly unrepresented litigant, the Open Courts provision ought to provide some relief. The contrary result “is rightly described as ‘shocking’ and is so absurd and so unjust that it ought not be possible.” Nelson, 678 S.W.2d at 923 (citing Hays v. Hall, 488 S.W.2d 412, 414 (Tex.1972); Gaddis v. Smith, 417 S.W.2d 577, 580, 581 (Tex.1967)).
But, here, an expert report could have been served in the approximately 100 days between the time Doan’s attorney filed suit and the day he died. The statutory scheme did not set up a practical impossibility, when the full filing period is considered. For that reason, I concur in the result set forth in the majority opinion.