Court Opinion

ID: 9660571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:16:14.094266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:20.689755
License: Public Domain

POPE, Justice,
dissenting.
The Supreme Court has by today’s decision for the first time intervened to set aside a trial court’s order denying a partial summary judgment. This court has ordered the trial court to grant the partial summary judgment. This court’s action violates settled principles and practices that a mandamus is not a proper vehicle to fore*836stall trial courts from making errors nor to correct even their obvious and gross errors. Appellate Procedure in Texas § 1.1(1), at 10 (2d ed. 1979). Mandamus is not a writ which affords an accelerated appeal nor priority of review by leaping over the trial and appellate process. A practice which tolerates a direct hearing before the Supreme Court on trial court rulings defeats the orderly trial and appellate process as we fully stated in Pope v. Ferguson, 445 S.W.2d 950, 954 (Tex.1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 997, 90 S.Ct. 1138, 25 L.Ed.2d 405 (1970):
Moreover, with this type of intervention, the fundamental concept of all American judicial systems of trial and appeal would become outmoded. Having entered the thicket to control or correct one such trial court ruling, the appellate courts would soon be asked in direct proceedings to require by writs of mandamus that trial judges enter orders, or set aside orders, sustaining or overruling (1) pleas to the jurisdiction, (2) pleas of privilege, (3) pleas in abatement, (4) motions for summary judgment, (5) motions for instructed verdict, (6) motions for judgment non obstante veredicto, (7) motions for new trial, and a myriad of interlocutory orders and judgments; and, as to each, it might logically be argued that the petitioner for the writ was entitled, as a matter of law, to the action sought to be compelled.
More disturbing than the court’s embracing a practice which permits a case to “bounce back and forth like a rubber ball between the district and the Supreme Court” (Maresca v. Marks, 362 S.W.2d 299 (Tex.1962) (Walker, J., dissenting), is the court’s liberty with the record before us. Recognizing that this court will not intervene by mandamus in partial summary judgment proceedings and other interim rulings at the trial court level, the court surprisingly supports its decision by declaring that the trial court’s action did not arise out of a summary judgment matter. This is not a correct or fair analysis of this whole record.
This Was and Is a Summary Judgment Proceeding
The State Bar filed this action to suspend Ronald Pruitt’s law license and to disbar him if his conviction is affirmed on appeal. The State Bar then filed what it called its Motion for Summary Judgment. It prayed that “the court grant this Motion for Summary Judgment, and that this Interlocutory Judgment be entered in favor of the Plaintiff against Defendant, suspending the law license of the Defendant during the penden-cy of any appeal from the convictions . .” The trial court ordered a hearing on “the foregoing Motion for Summary Judgment.” Mr. Pruitt filed his Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment, and the State Bar replied by pleading:
The summary judgment evidence currently on file herein, pursuant to Rules 166-A, Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, include the Plaintiff’s Original Formal Complaint . . . . Such documents on file in this cause are among those documents specifically set forth in Rule 166-A, Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact, and that the Plaintiff is entitled to judgment as a matter of law as set out in its Motion.
The State Bar in its prayer stated that it “reurges ... its Motion for Summary Judgment heretofore filed . . . .”
The hearing before the trial court on the State Bar’s suit to suspend the license pending the appeal of Mr. Pruitt’s conviction, was conducted exactly as a summary judgment proceeding by use of admissions and affidavits. I know of no proceeding other than a summary judgment hearing that permits the settlement of fact issues by affidavit. Rule 166-A, Tex.R.Civ.P.
The trial judge signed an order that recited:
[I]t is the Court’s opinion that the Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment should be denied . . . it is
ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the Motion for Summary Judgment filed by the State Bar of Tex*837as, be, and the same hereby is, denied

We now come to the State Bar’s documents filed before this court. The State Bar’s application for writ of mandamus filed in this court stated that the trial judge denied its “Motion for Summary Judgment,” and that it has no appeal from “the denial of the Motion for Summary Judgment.” The State Bar’s brief before this court states that the document it filed and that was heard by the trial court was “its Motion for Summary Judgment.” Its first point in the brief is: “The Respondent has, by entry of an order denying Relator’s Motion for Summary Judgment, applied judicial discretion to a statute that clearly authorizes no discretion.”
The State Bar in its opening statement on oral argument to this court should settle the nature of its application for this court’s writ of mandamus. Counsel told this .court:
The order of which we complain denies relator’s motion for summary judgment

But the opinion of this court says that the proceeding was not a summary judgment hearing.
The court has thus entered the thicket. We have done so to set aside a denial of a summary judgment and this court has itself granted the summary judgment, while the cause still languishes in the trial court.
The State Bar argues that it has no right to appeal, but it pleaded itself into that posture. It had to do no more than file a suit to suspend the law license and go to trial. Then either party could appeal from a final judgment. By pleading in a single action for too much, a suspension of the license and a disbarment in the future, the State Bar cannot get a final judgment until Pruitt’s conviction becomes final on appeal. Even now, the State Bar could sever its claim for disbarment or dismiss it, go to trial and obtain a final judgment. The court’s opinion invites pleadings that seek too much. By doing so one may urge in an extraordinary proceeding that it has no right to appeal. That is true of interim and interlocutory orders. Until now it was no basis for this court’s intervention.
The precedents cited by the majority do not hold that a mandamus will lie for the denial of a summary judgment. They fall into two groups. The first group of cases includes Stewart v. McCain, 575 S.W.2d 509 (Tex.1979); Texarkana Memorial Hosp., Inc., v. Jones, 551 S.W.2d 33 (Tex.1977); Houdaille Industries, Inc. v. Cunningham, 502 S.W.2d 544 (Tex.1973), and Maresca v. Marks, 362 S.W.2d 299 (Tex.1962). This court intervened in each of those cases to protect a constitutional or substantive privilege, because, once the privileged information was disgorged, it could not be retrieved. There is another group of cases cited to support the court’s grant of the motion for summary judgment. They are State ex rel. Pettit v. Thurmond, 516 S.W.2d 119 (Tex.1974); State Board of Insurance v. Betts, 158 Tex. 612, 315 S.W.2d 279 (1958); Stakes v. Rogers, 139 Tex. 650, 165 S.W.2d 81 (1942); and State v. Ferguson, 133 Tex. 60, 125 S.W.2d 272 (1939). Those cases do not stand for the rule for which they are stated in the court’s opinion. Those are cases in which this court intervened because the trial court had taken action for which it lacked power or jurisdiction.
The court by today’s decision has taken the step to intervene when the trial court’s ruling is clearly wrong. One need not now proceed by way of an appeal; he need not satisfy the jurisdictional requirements of article 1728. He need show only that a trial judge has violated a clear and unambiguous statutory provision conferring or forbidding a particular action.
I respectfully dissent.
CAMPBELL, J., joins in this dissent.