Court Opinion

ID: 9769467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:51:59.31726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:04.415717
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION
I respectfully dissent to the majority’s handling of the venue issue for the following reasons:
First, it is clear that the trial court never heard the appellants’ Motion to Transfer Venue, but rather spontaneously overruled same; second, following a bench trial, the trial court entered sixteen (16) pages of findings of fact and conclusions of law, which nowhere even remotely mention appellees slander allegations, for indeed, from the record, slander was not tried in this case. Even by expansion of judicial imagination, taking portions of the evidence, and attributing thereto some evidence of slanderous commentary, the record is nevertheless void of the statutorily required evidence that plaintiffs resided in Montgomery County “at the time of the accrual of the cause of action.” ... Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 15.017 (Vernon 1986).
Tex.R.Civ.P. 296, 297, 298, 299 and 299a, govern the trial court’s filing of findings of fact and conclusions of law. From a practice standpoint, we know that normally following bench trials where findings of fact and conclusions of law are requested, counsel for the prevailing party prepares same for the court. In the present ease, it is unclear whether counsel for appellees prepared same or whether the trial court did so. If counsel for appellees did so, slander was not a finding urged to the trial court. If the trial court prepared same, again slander was not a finding. Regardless, Tex.R.Civ.P. 298 and 299 provide for “additional” or “amended” or “omitted” findings.
This leads to but one conclusion, appellees abandoned their cause of action for slander. To now, on appeal, attempt to revive that claim seems inappropriate, albeit, for venue purposes. The trial court made very specific findings: actual fraud, constructive fraud, conversion, breach of fiduciary duties, breach of trust, negligent and intentional false representations, misapplication of fiduciary property, deception, willful and intentional injuries, tortuous interference, obtaining money and property under false pretense, breach of contract, false misleading and deceptive acts, theft, embezzlement, conspiracies, unconscionable conduct as a trastee, breach of confidential relationship and unjust enrichment. The specificity of findings by the trial court clearly excludes slander as an action in this suit. I think the majority goes too far in extrapolating evidence in support of a pleading which was apparently abandoned.
In Ruiz v. Conoco, Inc., 868 S.W.2d 752, 758 (Tex.1993), our Supreme Court held:
Therefore, if there is any probative evidence in the entire record, including trial on the merits, that venue was proper in the county where judgment was rendered, the appellate court must uphold the trial court’s determination. If there is no such evidence, the judgment must be reversed and the case remanded to the trial court. The error cannot be harmless, according to the statute. If there is any probative evidence that venue was proper in the county to which transfer was sought the appellate court should instruct the trial court to transfer the case to that county.
The evidence cited in the majority opinion may be probative to other issues in the ease. However, since slander was not an issue, the recited evidence cannot be probative thereto.
I would reverse with instruction that the cause be transferred to Harris County, Texas.