Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
The 98th District Court of Travis County entered a final judgment against appellants Meandering Bend, LLC and ATX Tillery, LLC on March 5, 2026. Appellants subsequently filed both a motion for new trial and a notice of appeal on April 20, 2026.
Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 26.1, a notice of appeal must ordinarily be filed within thirty days of the signed judgment. That deadline can be extended to ninety days if the appellant timely files a motion for new trial or other qualifying post-judgment motion. The thirty-day deadline in this case fell on April 4, 2026—a Saturday—making the effective deadline April 6, 2026.
Appellants’ motion for new trial, filed April 20, 2026, missed the April 6 deadline by two weeks and was therefore untimely. The court of appeals issued a jurisdictional inquiry on May 22, 2026, directing appellants to explain by June 1, 2026, how the court could exercise jurisdiction. Appellants did not respond.
The Court’s Holding
The Third Court of Appeals held that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal and dismissed it for want of jurisdiction under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 42.3(a). Because appellants’ motion for new trial was untimely, it did not trigger the ninety-day extension period under Rule 26.1(a). The controlling deadline for the notice of appeal therefore remained April 6, 2026.
Appellants’ notice of appeal, filed April 20, 2026, came fourteen days after that deadline. Appellants also failed to file a motion for extension of time within the fifteen-day window provided by Rule 26.3, and they did not respond to the court’s jurisdictional inquiry. With no basis to confer jurisdiction, the court had no choice but to dismiss.
Key Takeaways
- A motion for new trial must itself be timely filed to extend the appellate notice deadline from thirty to ninety days; an untimely motion for new trial has no tolling effect.
- When the thirty-day deadline falls on a Saturday, it rolls to the following Monday—but that adjusted date is the controlling deadline, not the original calendar date.
- Appellants who miss the notice-of-appeal deadline have a narrow fifteen-day window under Rule 26.3 to seek an extension; failure to use that window is fatal to appellate jurisdiction.
- Failure to respond to a jurisdictional inquiry from the court of appeals will not prevent dismissal and forfeits any opportunity to argue for jurisdiction.
Why It Matters
This memorandum opinion is a sharp reminder that appellate deadlines in Texas are jurisdictional and strictly enforced. Missing the motion-for-new-trial deadline by even a short margin eliminates the ninety-day extension and collapses the window for perfecting appeal back to thirty days—potentially leaving a party with no recourse regardless of the merits of its underlying claims.
Practitioners should calendar both the primary appellate deadlines and the fallback extension window under Rule 26.3, and should treat weekend adjustments to deadlines as a trap rather than a grace period. When a jurisdictional question arises, responding promptly to court inquiries is essential; silence, as demonstrated here, results in dismissal.