Townsend v. Air Bon Air
Conditioning Co.
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-24-00884-CV
(February 9, 2026)
Justices
Garcia (Opinion linked here), Jackson, and Lee
The
Townsends sued three HVAC contractors,
alleging they had negligently performed maintenance on the Townsends’ home that
caused carbon-monoxide poisoning. One defendant, Hatley Brothers, responded
with a combined motion for summary judgment and for sanctions pursuant to Tex.
R. Civ. P. 13 and TCPRC Chapter 10. The trial court granted summary judgment to
Hatley Brothers and also ordered the Townsends “and [their] counsel”
to pay Hatley Brothers $10,000 in attorney’s fees as a monetary sanction.
The Townsends appealed both
the summary judgment and the sanctions award, contending, among other things,
that the trial judge erred by imposing sanctions without conducting an
evidentiary hearing. The Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment, but
reversed and remanded the sanctions order against the Townsends. The Court
held, “It is settled law in this Court that a trial judge must hold an
evidentiary hearing before imposing sanctions under either Rule 13 or Chapter
10,” and the trial court had not done so in this case.
The Court of Appeals noted,
however, that the Townsends’ counsel had not filed his own notice of appeal
from the sanctions order or included himself as an appellant in the notice he
filed for the Townsends. So, the Court held it “lacked appellate jurisdiction
to review the sanctions order as to him” and therefore affirmed that part of
the trial court’s order. Yikes!
This holding and result are
not novel or unique. The Austin Court of Appeals, for example, has held that, “When
an attorney and his client are both sanctioned, and both wish to appeal the
sanctions order, this Court and other courts of appeals have held that it is
essential that both the client and the attorney be named as appellants in the
notice of appeal. This is because a client lacks standing to appeal sanctions
imposed on her attorney.” Cortez v. Brown, 2019 WL 961672, at *2 (Tex.
App.—Austin Feb. 28, 2019, pet. denied). Moral: where sanctions orders are
concerned, attorneys must take care of themselves as well as their clients.
