Court Opinion

ID: 9769545
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:54:11.869584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:24.204877
License: Public Domain

WARD, Justice,
concurring.
I concur that this case should be reversed as a fact issue is presented as to the cancellation of the policy. I further believe the Appellant’s second point should be sustained. Further, I do not agree with the overbroad statement made indicating that insufficiency of the pleadings cannot be raised for the first time on appeal from summary judgment. That statement has been used in the past, but it is not always correct.
As applied to the pleadings of the non-movant, it was correctly used in the case of Lewter v. Dallas County, 525 S.W.2d 885 (Tex.Civ.App. — Waco 1975, writ ref’d n.r. e.), where the non-movant plaintiff failed to allege previous presentment of his claim to the County. The Court correctly held that the summary judgment was improperly granted and followed the spirit of Womack v. Allstate Insurance Company, 156 Tex. 467, 296 S.W.2d 233 (1956). That case held that in a summary judgment proceeding, if the evidence shows, or raises a fact question as to, a ground of recovery or defense in favor of the non-movant, even though such ground of recovery or defense is not pleaded, such evidence will preclude a summary judgment in favor of the moving party.
As applied to the pleadings of the mov-ant, then the question of whether or not the insufficiency of the pleadings can be raised for the first time on appeal depends upon the degree of the fault which is present in thp movant’s, pleadings., In .the present case, the insurance carrier from the time of filing suit alleged the cancellation of the workmen’s compensation insurance policy, and that was the ground asserted in its motion for summary judgment. The Appellant may not have been misled, but there *354was a complete failure to follow the requirements of Rule 93. That is something more than a “purely formal” defect in the movant’s papers. Since “virtually all burdens are on the movant,” why should we hold that the non-movant, upon penalty'of waiver, appear and except to the movant’s pleadings for having failed to verify them by affidavit? See Swilley v. Hughes supra, at 68. In Baca v. Transport Insurance Company, supra, there was a complete failure by the movant insurance company to plead the denial of good cause as required by Rule 93(n), and that case correctly held that the summary judgment should not have been granted. That case was decided in the spirit of the holding of DeBord v. Muller, 446 S.W.2d 299 (Tex.1969). There, the pleading of the movant DeBord never raised the proven affirmative defense of res judicata, a matter which was required to be pled by the terms of Rule 94. Here, the movant for summary judgment has undertaken to move for summary judgment on a matter not properly raised according to Rule 93. I would sustain the Appellant’s second point.
All of this merely points to the problems which are present when rules as to pleadings which were drawn with a conventional trial in mind have to be applied to the entirely different concept of summary judgment, and the problem will continue as long as Rule 166-A retains its present form.