Parker v. Wisehouse Investment Group, LLC
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-24-00104-CV (June 18, 2025)
Justices Garcia, Miskel (Opinion, linked here), and Lee
A court order meant to be a final judgment will usually say so. The order may be labeled as “Final,” include a “Mother Hubbard Clause,” or expressly state that it’s appealable. But even if an order doesn’t include such explicit indicia of finality, it still can constitute a final judgment—and the deadline to appeal will be triggered—if the order disposes of all claims and all parties. The defendants in a procedurally complicated dispute learned that the hard way when the Dallas Court of Appeals dismissed for want of jurisdiction because it held they filed their notice of appeal too late.
The trial court granted summary judgment to the plaintiff and awarded them attorneys’ fees under the Declaratory Judgments Act. One of the plaintiffs moved to have the court award costs and post-judgment interest, but waited 44 days after the summary-judgment orders to do so. The trial court nevertheless obliged, issuing judgments that included those additional items and labeling them as “final” and “appealable.” The defendants appealed.
The Dallas Court of Appeals dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The Court held that the original summary judgment orders constituted final judgments. It explained that “a summary-judgment order” will be deemed “final when (1) it actually disposes of every pending claim and party or (2) it clearly and unequivocally states that it finally disposes of all claims and parties, even if it does not actually do so.” The summary-judgment orders here did not contain any indicia of finality—they were not labeled as final or appealable, and they did not state that they disposed of all claims and all parties. Nevertheless, the appeals court held, the summary-judgment orders did in fact dispose of all claims, and that started the clock on the defendants’ 30-day deadline to file either their appeal or post-judgment motions that would extend the time to appeal. Unfortunately, the defendants did neither before the deadline ran. Although one of the plaintiffs had moved the court to add costs and interest—arguably a motion to modify judgment—that motion came after the deadline had already passed for post-judgment motions. The motion therefore had no effect and the purported “final judgments” that followed therefore were void and did not re-start the appellate clock.
The defendants tried to salvage their appeal by arguing that the summary-judgment orders were not final because they did not award costs and because they did not expressly dispose of the defendants’ cursory pleas for costs and fees in the prayers that concluded their answers. But, the Court said, “a request for costs is not a claim for affirmative relief, and ‘a trial court is not required to assess costs for its judgment to be final.’” Further, the defendants did not state a cognizable basis for an award of fees and, in any event, the award of fees to the plaintiffs as prevailing parties constituted an implied rejection of defendants’ reciprocal prayers for fees.
