Houston Court Finds 45-Day Filing Deadline is not a Jurisdictional Prohibition

A Houston Court of Appeals has concluded that a claimant filed a timely suit for judicial review of a Division decision, reversing the trial court’s earlier order that dismissed the case as having been filed too late to give the court jurisdiction. The case purports to resolve a split of authority among several courts of appeals regarding whether the 45-day filing deadline for filing suit for judicial review is a statute of limitations or a jurisdictional prohibition.

The case is Chicas v. Texas Mutual Ins. Co., No. 01-16-00226-CV, May 16, 2017. The case followed a fatal fall from a ladder by Santiago Chicas while he was cleaning gutters at a home owned by the CEO of his employer. Santiago’s beneficiary, Bertila Chicas, filed a wrongful death case in a Harris County Probate Court. She also pursued workers’ compensation death benefits, which had been contested by the workers’ compensation carrier for Santiago’s employer. After several hearings, the Division found that Santiago had not died while in the course and scope of his employment. Bertila attempted to file suit for judicial review of the Division’s decision in the following manner.

On February 4, 2015—within the 45-day time limit for initiating a suit for judicial review—Bertila amended her petition in the probate court to assert also her claim for judicial review of the DWC’s decision. Five months later, Texas Mutual filed a plea to the jurisdiction in the probate court, which the probate court granted on October 15, 2015.2 On October 27, 2015—twelve days after the probate court dismissed her judicial review claims—Bertila refiled those claims in Harris County District Court. Texas Mutual filed a plea to the jurisdiction, arguing that the 45-day deadline for judicial review was jurisdictional. Bertila responds that the 45-day deadline is not jurisdictional, and because it is not jurisdictional, the tolling statute found in section 16.064 of the Civil Practices and Remedies Code applies and makes her filing in district court timely.

The trial court agreed with the carrier and dismissed Bertila’s suit for judicial review for want of jurisdiction. Bertila appealed to the court of appeals. The court first observed that there was a split of authority among several courts of appeals over whether the 45-day filing deadline was jurisdictional (that is, whether a trial court even has the power to hear a case that is not filed in a timely manner) or whether that deadline operates as a statute of limitations (limitations being an affirmative defense that can be extended or waived).

The court concluded that the cases holding that the deadline was merely a statute of limitations were correctly decided under a 2000 Texas Supreme Court case called Dubai Petroleum co. v. Kazi.

Bertila’s present suit was admittedly filed more than 45 days after the DWC’s decision became final; but, if the 45-day deadline is not jurisdictional and was tolled while her judicial review claims were pending in probate court, then her suit for judicial review would be timely. Thus, the issue presented to this Court is whether the 45-day deadline for filing claims for judicial review of a final DWC decision is a jurisdictional, statutory prerequisite to asserting those claims in district court.

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[I]n 2000, the Texas Supreme Court overruled prior authority, which had held that the failure to comply with statutory prerequisites was always jurisdictional. See Dubai Petroleum Co. v. Kazi, 12 S.W.3d 71, 76 (Tex. 2000) (overruling Mingus v. Wadley, 285 S.W. 1084, 1087 (Tex. 1926)). In Kazi, the supreme court considered the jurisdictional nature of a statutory requirement that, in wrongful death suits involving the death of a citizen in a foreign county, the foreign county have “equal treaty rights” with the United States. Id. at 73–74. The supreme court noted that classifying a matter as jurisdictional “opens the way to making judgments vulnerable to delayed attack for a variety of irregularities that perhaps better ought to be sealed in a judgment[,]” and overruled prior case law to the contrary “to the extent that it characterized the plaintiff’s failure to establish a statutory prerequisite as jurisdictional. Id. at 76. Instead, “[t]he right of a plaintiff to maintain a suit, while frequently treated as going to the question of jurisdiction, has been said to go in reality to the right of the plaintiff to relief rather than to the jurisdiction of the court to afford it.” Id. at 76–77.

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After considering (1) the statutory language, (2) the statute’s purpose, (3) the consequences of each interpretation, and (4) whether the statute defines, enlarges, or restricts the class of causes the trial court may decide or the relief that it may award, we conclude that, while the 45-day deadline for filing judicial review claims is mandatory, it is not jurisdictional.

The question presented in this case is important and the answer to the question has remained in dispute for many years. This case may present an opportunity for the Texas Supreme Court to resolve the issue once and for all.