Court Opinion

ID: 9777733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:21:58.007221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:00.361455
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
I adhere to the views expressed in my earlier dissent, being somewhat appalled by the procedural disaster generated by the majority’s perfunctory application of Rule 21c, Tex.R.Civ.P.Ann.
By denying appellant’s motion to permit a late filing of the statement of facts, despite the mitigating facts that:
(a) the transcript was timely filed;
(b) the statement of facts was timely prepared and distributed to the opposing counsel;
(c) appellee did not plead, nor could he show, any harm resulting from the appellant’s oversight in not timely filing the statement of facts, because he received a copy thereof well before the May 27th deadline;
(d) no delay in the appellate process whatsoever occurred;
the majority compels the conclusiveness of the trial court’s findings; forces the presumption that the evidence was sufficient to support such findings; and effectively ignores adjudication of appellant’s nineteen points of error, most of which were eviden-tiary questions.
In this triumph of form over substance, the majority succeeds in nullifying the teaching of Cheek v. Zalta, 669 S.W.2d 719 (Tex.1984), in which a similar situation induced the Supreme Court to remand the cause to the Court of Appeals “to allow the filing of the statement of facts and briefs and for consideration of the merits.”
Nor can I agree with the majority’s unsupported holding that we are not entitled to consider uncontested assertions contained in the parties’ briefs as a substitute statement of facts, pursuant to Tex.R. Civ.P. 419. See Sarris v. Christi, 217 S.W.2d 99, 101 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1949, writ ref’d n.r.e.), which holds:
The factual background of the suit, other than applicable summary conclusions of law, is not controverted or challenged in briefs of the parties, accepted [sic] as correct; thus in absence of a statement of facts on this appeal, the required statement in briefs, Rule 419, Vernon’s Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, as to the facts upon which the judgment appealed from was based, are adopted in lieu of statement of facts.
Our Rule 1 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure was assigned its preferred, and in fact primary, position to indicate decisively that all subsequent rules shall be given a liberal construction in order to obtain a “just, fair, equitable and impartial adjudication of the rights of litigants under established principles of substantive law.”
By blindly applying Rule 21c, we are depriving appellant of his right to an adjudication on the merits and thus his fundamental right to procedural fairness. This constitutes a violation, as I said in my earlier dissent, of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, “perhaps the most majestic concept in our whole constitutional system.” 1 Its operation in this case compels conclusions and presumptions that, in *432effect, deprive this Court of the opportunity to affirm the fairness of the trial.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 173-4 (1951) (concurring opinion).