Opinion
No. 05-09-00069-CV
Opinion issued August 3, 2010.
On Appeal from the County Court at Law No. 1 Dallas County, Texas, Trial Court Cause No. cc-07-13437-A.
Before Justices O'NEILL, FRANCIS, and MURPHY.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
In this appeal, we decide whether the trial court erred in concluding that an amended motion for sanctions, filed within thirty days of a final order of nonsuit, did not extend the court's plenary power to consider the requested sanctions. We conclude it did. We affirm in part and reverse in part the trial court's order and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The City of Garland sued its former attorney, Charles M. Hinton, Jr., for breach of contract. One year later, Hinton filed a motion for sanctions, asserting that the City had failed to respond to discovery; the lawsuit was groundless and brought in bad faith and for purposes of harassment; and the City attempted to hide that its claims were without merit by abusing the discovery process by resisting discovery. The motion sought sanctions under Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 13 and 215.3. Less than one month later, the City filed a Notice of Nonsuit Without Prejudice.
On November 4, 2008, the trial court signed an order of nonsuit dismissing the City's claims with prejudice. The order also provided as follows: "All relief not granted as to each party is expressly denied. This Judgment finally and fully disposes of all parties and claims." On November 17, Hinton filed a first amended motion for sanctions and for attorneys' fees, asking that the case be reinstated for the sole purpose of hearing the sanctions issue. The trial judge conducted a hearing on the motion on December 18 during which she concluded she was without plenary power to consider the amended motion for sanctions:
The City has not complained that the trial court dismissed its claims "with prejudice," and we therefore express no opinion on the correctness of that ruling.
[TRIAL COURT]: . . . I don't know that a motion — an amended motion for sanctions is a plenary power-extending motion. Traditional plenary power-extending motions are a motion to reinstate, a motion for new trial. And your motion was submitted in that form.
In fact, it's not even apparent that you're asking for a reinstatement because it's nowhere listed in this style on the document, and so the clerks would not have been able to file it as a motion to reinstate.
[HINTON'S COUNSEL]: My understanding, Your Honor, was that . . . the title of the document was not controlling as far as the — the particular substance of the motion and that, you know, in the — in the prayer, we specifically asked that we — that the case be reinstated.
This Court should reinstate the above-entitled and numbered cause for the sole purpose of awarding defendant its attorneys' fees and expenses necessarily incurred in defending against this action and dismissing the case with prejudice.
[TRIAL COURT]: Reinstatement is not necessary for the purpose of hearing a pending motion for sanctions. The problem is you amended your motion. You basically pled yourself out of your motion is what happened. When you amended your motion for sanctions after the nonsuit, you pled yourself out of Court because there was nothing that the Court could do at that time because the suit had already been nonsuited.
If you had not amended your motion, then that motion could have been heard by the Court because it would have been pending at the time that the case was nonsuited.
[HINTON'S COUNSEL]: So, you are saying that the amended motion — the amended motion that was filed after the nonsuit-
[TRIAL COURT]: Superceded [sic] your previous motion.
[HINTON'S COUNSEL]: — superceded [sic] the previous motion. If it was-
[TRIAL COURT]: Therefore, it was-
[HINTON'S COUNSEL]: I'm sorry, Your Honor.
[TRIAL COURT]: Therefore, it was outside of the Court's ability to do anything.
The trial judge went on to explain that by amending the motion after the nonsuit, Hinton had "come up with a new issue that didn't exist before the nonsuit." On the docket sheet, the trial court denied the motion with the notation that it had "no power to hear b/c filed after nonsuit[.]"
The record shows the trial court signed a final order of nonsuit on November 4, 2008. See Unifund CCR Partners v. Villa, 299 S.W.3d 92, 96 (Tex. 2009) (per curiam) (recognizing that order of nonsuit may be final, even though a pending sanctions motion is left unresolved, when the judgment disposes of all parties and all issues in pleadings); Lane Bank Equip. Co. v. Smith So. Equip., Inc., 10 S.W.3d 308, 312 (Tex. 2000) (same). A trial court retains jurisdiction over a case for a minimum of thirty days after signing a final judgment. Tex. R. Civ. P. 329b(d); Lane, 10 S.W.3d at 310. The period of plenary power may be extended, however, by timely filing an appropriate postjudgment motion. Lane, 10 S.W.3d at 310. A motion for sanctions filed within the thirty-day period constitutes a timely-filed motion to modify the judgment under rule 329b(g) for purposes of extending the trial court's plenary powers. See id. at 312, 314 (explaining that motion made after judgment to incorporate sanction as part of final judgment proposes change to judgment and is, on its face, motion to modify, correct, or reform existing judgment within meaning of rule 329b(g)).
Here, the amended motion for sanctions was timely filed within thirty days of the final order of nonsuit and operated to extend the trial court's plenary power for 105 days from the date of the final order of nonsuit, or until February 17, 2009. See Tex. R. Civ. P. 329b(c), (e). That the motion was an amended motion filed after the nonsuit order was signed is inapposite. Cf. The Traveler's Ins. Co. v. Joachim, No. 08-0941, 2010 WL 1933022, at *2 (Tex. May 14, 2010) ("After a nonsuit, a trial court retains jurisdiction to address collateral matters, such as motions for sanctions, even when such motions are filed after the nonsuit, as well as jurisdiction over any remaining counterclaims."). Consequently, the trial court retained jurisdiction over the case at the time of the December 18, 2008 hearing on the amended sanctions motion, and the trial court's conclusion to the contrary was error.
We reverse the trial court's order of nonsuit to the extent it disposes of Hinton's request for sanctions and remand the cause to the trial court to consider Hinton's amended motion for sanctions. In all other respects, we affirm the trial court's order of nonsuit.