Campbell v. Wilder
| Decision Date | 01 April 2016 |
| Docket Number | NO. 14–0379,14–0379 |
| Citation | 487 S.W.3d 146 |
| Parties | Odell Campbell, Shawnta Renea Coleman, Thomas Ray Robertson, Diana J. Najera, Scott Wiernik, Tairhonda McAfee and Marybeth Lynn Jewell, Petitioners, v. Thomas A. Wilder, Tarrant County District Clerk, Respondent |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
Thomas S. Leatherbury, Vinson & Elkins L.L.P., Dallas TX, Amicus Curiae.
Thomas Stutz, Fort Worth TX, for Other interested party/Petitioner.
Amy Warr, Wallace B. Jefferson, Alexander Dubose Jefferson & Townsend LLP, Lee Anne DiFilippo, DiFilippo Limited Partnership, Austin TX, Jason C.N. Smith, Law Offices of Jason Smith, Linda Harvill Gregory, Methodist Justice Ministry, Fort Worth TX, Thomas Fenton Allen Jr., Basheer Youssef Ghorayeb, Jasmine Wynton, Jones Day, Dallas TX, for Petitioner.
Christopher William Ponder, Asst. District Attorney, Joe Shannon Jr., Criminal District Attorney, Fort Worth TX, for Respondent.
The trial court temporarily enjoined the District Clerk of Tarrant County from billing court costs to parties who had filed uncontested affidavits of indigency. A divided court of appeals vacated the injunction and dismissed the case because the trial court had not rendered the judgments in the cases in which costs were billed.1 We consider whether the trial court had jurisdiction over a challenge to the District Clerk's exercise of his ministerial duties, and if so, whether injunctive relief is appropriate. We reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings.
Petitioners are six individuals2 who sued for divorce in Tarrant County between 2008 and 2012. Like thousands of other parties to divorce cases in the family district courts of Tarrant County during that period, Petitioners each filed an uncontested affidavit of indigency in lieu of paying costs as permitted by Rule 145 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. Petitioners' final divorce decrees nevertheless allocated costs, providing either that “costs of Court are to be borne by the party who incurred them” or that “Husband will pay for his court costs [and] the Wife will pay for her court costs.” The decrees did not state the amount of costs due or that Petitioners were able to afford them.
Between May and August 2012, each of the Petitioners received collection notices from Respondent, the District Clerk of Tarrant County, demanding from each, on average, about $300 in court costs and fees. The notices threatened that the sheriff would seize property to satisfy the debt. Petitioners were understandably upset and frightened by the notices. When the Texas Advocacy Project protested on behalf of some of the Petitioners, the District Clerk responded that he was bound by the decrees allocating costs to the party who incurred them. He encouraged any party wishing not to pay costs to return to the family court that rendered the divorce decree to have costs retaxed.
The court temporarily enjoined the District Clerk from “continuing his policy of collection of court costs from indigent parties who have filed an affidavit on indigency”.
The District Clerk appealed, contending that Section 65.023(b) of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code deprived the civil district court of jurisdiction, and alternatively, that injunctive relief was improper because Petitioners have an adequate remedy at law. A divided court of appeals vacated the injunction and dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction.3 We granted Petitioners' petition for review.4
We first consider the applicability of Section 65.023(b) to this case.
Section 65.023(b) provides that “[a] writ of injunction granted to stay proceedings in a suit or execution on a judgment must be tried in the court in which the suit is pending or the judgment was rendered.”5 This statutory provision dates to 1846.6
We interpreted the 1911 version7 in a 1923 case, Carey v. Looney.8 There, a district court in McLennan County rendered a personal money judgment for Looney and awarded him an order of sale to be executed on a piece of land in Milam County to satisfy the judgment.9 Carey, who was not a party to the judgment and claimed to own the land, sued in a district court in Milam County for an injunction prohibiting Looney and the sheriff from executing the order of sale and writ of possession, and from disturbing her and her tenants' lawful possession.10 The court dismissed the action for want of jurisdiction on the ground that the statute required the action to be brought in the court in McLennan County.11 We disagreed.
The purposes of the statute, we said, are “to protect the judgments and processes of one court from interference by another by direct attack” and to “prevent[ ] a defeated party from proceeding from one court to another, after his defeat, or in the hope of avoiding defeat, in an attempt to relitigate the case.”12 The Milam County court's exercise of jurisdiction offended neither. We then described the statute's applicability as follows:
The test of jurisdiction in such cases13 is whether the relief sought may be granted independently of the judgment or its mandate sought to be enjoined. If, in order to grant the relief, it is necessary to set aside or modify the judgment, or to regulate the processes issued thereunder, and the attack is made by a party to the judgment, the statute is mandatory and requires that the injunction suit be returnable to and tried in the court rendering the judgment. On the other hand, if the court in which the injunction suit is brought has general jurisdiction over the subject-matter, and the relief may be granted, independently of the matters adjudicated in the suit whose judgment or processes thereunder are sought to be restrained, the statute has no application.14
The District Clerk here looks past the test set out in the first sentence and argues that the applicability of what is now Section 65.023(b) depends on whether a case is in the category defined by the second sentence in the quoted passage, to which the statute applies, or the category defined by the third sentence, to which the statute does not apply. Because a bill of costs is a process issued under a judgment, and each of the Petitioners was a party to his or her own divorce decree, the District Clerk contends that Petitioners' claims for injunctive relief fall in the former category.
The District Clerk's argument misreads Carey. Carey's case fell outside the statute's applicability because the relief Carey sought was independent of the matters adjudicated by the judgment in McLennan County. That court had not adjudicated Carey's claims; she was not a party. But the court did adjudicate whether the interests of the defendants before it should be sold; indeed, the court issued an order of sale.15 Carey's suit to stop the execution process issued to enforce Looney's judgment would have been governed by the statute but for the fact that she was not a party to Looney's case. If the statute merely prohibited a party to a judgment from asking another court to enjoin its enforcement, it would have been much easier to draw the line there, having noted that a purpose of the statute is to prevent a party from forum-shopping. But another purpose, we said, is to prevent one court from directly attacking another's judgment. “The test” is whether relief can be granted independently of the judgment. What followed were merely examples.
We made clear later in the opinion that the applicability of what is now Section 65.023(b) does not turn on whether the applicant for injunctive relief is a party to the judgment from which his or her complaint arises.
Where specific property has been levied upon under a general execution, the levy and sale may be enjoined in another court, even by a party to the suit. The ground of such holding is that the injunction of a sale of specific property, on the claim that it is not subject to the levy, is not a stay or interference with the processes of another court.... On the other hand, where the judgment itself orders the sale of specific property, such sale cannot be restrained by another court upon the application of a party to the judgment.16
The applicability of the statute depends on whether injunctive relief can be granted independently of the judgment, not on whether the applicant for injunctive relief was a party to the judgment, or on whether an injunction will disturb process issuing as a result of that judgment.
In other words, under Carey, the fact that the injunction may disturb process issuing as a result of the judgment is but one example of when a court could be unable to grant relief independently of the judgment. But that does not mean that an injunction that disturbs process can never be granted independently of the judgment. Even if a plaintiff seeks an injunction that will regulate the processes issued under a judgment, courts must still consider whether, under the specific circumstances of each case, the injunction may nevertheless be issued independently of the judgment.
The District Clerk's misinterpretation of the statute finds some support in our 1982 per...
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...an indigent litigant to pay costs when he has filed an uncontested affidavit of indigence pursuant to rule 145. Campbell v. Wilder , 487 S.W.3d 146, 151–52 (Tex. 2016).Turning back to appellant's case, I would hold that he has met his burden of establishing that Texas Code of Criminal Proce......
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...an indigent litigant to pay costs when he has filed an uncontested affidavit of indigence pursuant to rule 145. Campbell v. Wilder , 487 S.W.3d 146, 151–52 (Tex. 2016).Turning back to appellant’s case, I would hold that he has met his burden of establishing that Texas Code of Criminal Proce......
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