Court Opinion

ID: 9642886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:11:39.82876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:53.891227
License: Public Domain

POWERS, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because appellants were denied due process of law when their suit was dismissed sua sponte and without notice and an opportunity for hearing. Rotello v. State, 492 S.W.2d 347 (Tex.Civ.App.), writ ref’d n.r.e., 497 S.W.2d 290 (Tex.1973).
Appellants’ motion to reinstate their suit was filed “pursuant to Rule 165a of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.” The hearing on appellants’ motion was directed at issues determinable under Rule 165a, primarily whether the notice which preceded dismissal of appellants’ suit was sufficient to meet the requirements of that Rule. The trial court, in dismissing the cause for want of prosecution, could quite clearly not do so on the basis of Rule 165a for the reason that the procedure specified therein for notice and hearing was not followed in the present case. Understandably, then, to uphold the order of dismissal one must resort to the trial court’s inherent power to dismiss a cause when it is not prosecuted with reasonable diligence.
The inherent power of the trial court to dismiss a cause, when it is not prosecuted with reasonable diligence, is obvious and admitted. However, one observes that in each of the citations to which the majority refer, dismissal followed notice and a hearing where the plaintiff was afforded an opportunity to “show cause” why his suit should not be dismissed, either for a general lack of diligence or for a failure to take some action previously directed by the trial court. Veterans’ Land Bd. v. Williams, 543 S.W.2d 89, 90 (Tex.1976); Bevil v. Johnson, 157 Tex. 621, 307 S.W.2d 85, 86 (1957); Coven v. Dailey, 652 S.W.2d 527, 529 (Tex.App.1983, writ ref’d n.r.e.). No *577such opportunity was given appellants in the present case.
The record before us reflects that appellants’ suit was, by order of the trial court, expressly taken from the “dismissal docket” and placed again on the “active docket,” albeit on a “condition that some dispos-itive action be taken not later than January 15, 1982.” The order purports then to provide that the suit, although pending on the “active docket,” would be subject to “summary dismissal without further notice to the parties” in the event “some dispositive action” is not so taken. Therein lies the vice. Summary dismissal could not constitutionally be ordered; that is, appellants’ suit could not constitutionally be dismissed without first giving them an opportunity to explain why “some dispositive action” had not been taken before January 15, 1982. Rotello v. State, supra.
The circumstances of the Rotello case are very similar to those of the present case. There, “all attorneys” practicing in the trial court’s judicial district had been mailed a letter warning them that all pending suits filed before January 1, 1970 would be dismissed for want of prosecution on January 4,1972 unless, before that date, “an amended pleading is filed therein or a letter is received requesting that said case remain on the docket.” Rotello’s pending case had been filed before January 1, 1970 and was therefore subject to dismissal under the terms of the letter. No amended pleading was filed in Rotello’s case nor was a letter received requesting that it remain on the docket. Accordingly, on January 12, 1972, Rotello’s case, along with 249 others, was by a single order dismissed for want of prosecution. The order recited no basis for the dismissal. The Court of Civil Appeals wrote:
The judgment [of dismissal] does not show by recital that this case was set down for trial, or that it was placed on a dismissal docket by the trial judge, or that notice of any such action was given to appellants or their attorneys. There was nothing in the record on the date this appeal was perfected reflecting that appellants were afforded an opportunity to explain the delay in bringing the case to trial prior to its dismissal from the docket. Due process requires that adequate notice of such a hearing be given appellants before the judgment was rendered dismissing their suit, [citations omitted]
492 S.W.2d at 349 (emphasis added).
In refusing application for writ of error, no reversible error, the Supreme Court of Texas wrote as follows in Rotello:
In our opinion the record affirmatively shows that plaintiff and his attorney were not given proper notice prior to dismissal of the case. The application for writ of error is refused, no reversible error, but we are not to be understood as approving the holding of the Court of Civil Appeals, if it did so hold, that a case may not properly be dismissed for want of prosecution unless it has first been set for trial, or that the failure to set for trial affects the showing that must be made to obtain a reversal when the order of dismissal is subjected to a direct attack by appeal or writ of error.
497 S.W.2d at 291 (emphasis added). Thus, the Supreme Court affirmed the fundamental holding of the Court of Civil Appeals that dismissal for want of prosecution can only follow notice and an opportunity to be heard relative to any explanation the plaintiff may have for his apparent want of diligence, a principle previously established in Callahan v. Staples, 139 Tex. 8, 161 S.W.2d 489, 491 (1942) and the other decisions cited by the Court of Civil Appeals. And, of course, the interests of judicial efficiency and the provisions of “local rules” may not be allowed to dilute the requirements of due process to less than the irreducible minimum implicit in the Constitutional guaranty of due process of law — prior notice and hearing in this instance.
While the majority quite properly cite Rotello, they do so only as an abstract legal proposition — due process of law requires prior notice and a hearing before a trial court may dismiss a cause for want of *578prosecution. However, the majority then proceed to ignore the application of that requirement in this case where the trial court, sua sponte, dismissed appellants’ suit without affording them notice and an opportunity to be heard to explain, if they could, why “some dispositive action” had not been taken before January 15,1982. If we are going to rely upon the trial court’s inherent power to dismiss a cause for want of prosecution, we must take the doctrine in its entirety, including the requirement of prior notice and an opportunity for hearing as to any explanation appellants may have. Because this requirement was manifestly not met in the present case, I would reverse the judgment below and remand the cause to the trial court.