Badger Tavern LP v. City of Dallas
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-23-00299-CV (April 20, 2023)
Chief Justice Burns (opinion available
here) and Justices Molberg and Goldstein
The
rules authorizing interlocutory appeals are strictly construed—really strictly.
Rule 168 requires that a court’s permission to appeal an otherwise unappealable
order “must be stated in the appealed order.” In this case, the trial court
denied a Rule 91a motion to dismiss and then later signed a separate order
granting permission to appeal that denial. The Dallas Court of Appeals, relying
on the plain language of the rule and similar cases out of other jurisdictions,
dismissed the appeal. It held: “[b]ecause the trial court did not sign a single
order that both denied appellants’ rule 91a motion to dismiss and granted
permission to appeal the order, this Court has no jurisdiction over this
appeal.”
