On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the First District of Texas
The respondent sued the petitioner in 2007, and the case went to trial in May 2010. The jury returned a verdict for the respondent. After the verdict but before the judgment was signed the petitioner filed a JNOV motion on legal insufficiency grounds. Prior to the JNOV motion hearing, the trial court signed a judgment for the respondent on June 14, 2010, initiating the appellate time table. The judgment also purported to, via a handwritten notation by the judge on the face of the order, deny the petitioner's JNOV motion. The respondent filed a response to the JNOV motion. Though no written order appeared in the record, an electronic docket sheet indicated that the judge denied the motion. The petitioner filed a notice of appeal in the trial court, sixty-five days after the judgment was signed. The appellate court granted the motion and issued a per curiam opinion because although a JNOV motion might extend the appellate timetable to ninety days in some circumstances, it only does so if filed after the judgment was signed, and not before. The Texas Supreme Court found that an arguable interpretation of appellate rules 26.1(a) and 27.2 and civil rules 329b and 306c allowed the petitioner's motion, though filed pre-judgment, to nevertheless extended the appellate timetable to ninety days. The petitioner's sixty-fifth-day notice of appeal was therefore timely, and the appellate court erred in dismissing the appeal. Pursuant to Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 59.1, the appellate court's judgment was reversed and remanded to that court for consideration of the petitioner's appeal.