Rules Are Rules

 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.”
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