Scarlette Rafferty Elliott And Sean Paul Rafferty, Appellants v. Birchman Baptist Church, Appellee (2015)

MEMORANDUM OPINION 1

On April 14, 2015, we abated this appeal to permit the trial court to clarify whether it intended its January 23, 2015 “Final Order” to be a final, appealable judgment.   We stated that if we did not receive a supplemental clerk's record clarifying the trial court's intention on or before May 14, 2015, we would presume that the trial court intended its order to be a nonappealable, interlocutory order and dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction.

We have not received a supplemental clerk's record or any other communication indicating the trial court intended its order to be a final, appealable judgment.   Instead, we have received a copy of a conditional order of the trial court seeking the 431st District Court's approval to transfer the underlying case to the 431st District Court, in which a second suit regarding the same subject matter is pending.   In that conditional order, the trial court indicates that it would waste judicial resources to have the same subject matter pending in two different courts and that the trial court did not believe it had jurisdiction over “all the matters at issue.”  [Emphasis added.]   The trial court's conditional order clarifies that it did not intend its January 23, 2015 Final Order to be a final, appealable order.

Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction.   See Farm Bureau Cnty. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Rogers, 455 S.W.3d 161, 163–64 (Tex.2015);  Lehmann v. Har–Con Corp., 39 S.W.3d 191, 205–06 (Tex.2001).

FOOTNOTES

1.   See Tex.R.App. P. 47.4.

TERRIE LIVINGSTON, CHIEF JUSTICE