In a per curiam opinion the Texas Supreme Court conditionally granted a writ of mandamus, directing the trial court to grant a timely-filed motion to designate responsible third parties. In re Frank Coppola and Bridget Coppola, Relators, ___Tx. S. Ct. J. ___(Cause No. 16-0723)(Tex. December 12, 2017)(per curiam). In so doing, the Court held that, “Trial courts have no discretion to deny a timely-filed motion to designate absent a pleading defect and an opportunity to cure….”
In this tort suit arising from a real estate transaction, the trial court denied defendants leave to designate the plaintiff’s attorneys, who had been hired to advise on the real estate transaction, as responsible third parties because the motion was not timely. The motion was filed long after an initial trial date but more than 60 days before a new trial setting. The Court held that the motion was timely and that it was an abuse of discretion to deny the timely-filed motion absent a pleading defect and opportunity to cure.
The Court next considered for the first time whether mandamus relief was appropriate for denial of a responsible-third-party designation. Relying on In re Prudential Insurance Co. of America, 148 S.W.3d 124 (Tex. 2004)(orig. proceeding), the Court found that allowing a case to proceed to trial despite erroneous denial of a responsible-third-party designation would skew proceedings, potentially affect the outcome of the litigation, and compromise the presentation of the relator’s case in ways unlikely to be apparent in the appellate record. Thus, the Court held that, ordinarily, a relator need only establish a trial court’s abuse of discretion to demonstrate entitlement to mandamus relief with regard to a trial court’s denial of a timely-filed section 33.004 motion.
