Opinion
02-23-00109-CV
01-11-2024
Juliette Gallant, Appellant v. City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Keller Independent School District, Tarrant County College District, Tarrant County Hospital District, and Tarrant Regional Water District
On Appeal from the 348th District Court Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 348-D25260-20
Before Sudderth, C.J.; Kerr and Walker, JJ.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Brian Walker Justice
In this delinquent tax suit, pro se Appellant Juliette Gallant appeals the trial court's judgment in favor of Appellees City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Keller Independent School District, Tarrant County College District, Tarrant County Hospital District, and Tarrant Regional Water District. Having considered Appellees' motion to dismiss for want of prosecution, we will dismiss this appeal.
Gallant's appellate brief was originally due on August 7, 2023. See Tex.R.App.P. 38.6(a). We informed Gallant of this deadline via a July 6, 2023 letter on the same day that the reporter's record was filed. In the ensuing months, Gallant filed more than a dozen motions with this court. In disposing of these many motions, we extended the deadline for Gallant's brief to October 23, 2023. Gallant requested another deadline extension which we granted on October 20, 2023, ordering that her brief was due on November 27, 2023. Gallant yet again requested a deadline extension on November 3, 2023, which we denied, reiterating in our order that her brief remained due on November 27, 2023.
Most of Gallant's motions were denied because they were meritless, mooted, or asked us to act outside of our jurisdiction.
In this motion, Gallant requested sixty-one more days to file her brief and proffered numerous reasons why she needed further time to complete her brief, including that: there were three federal holidays in the month of November 2023; she can only access legal databases at a local law library, which is closed in the evenings and on weekends; the legal library only has eight computers with access to legal databases; "[f]rigid temps; freeze warnings; weather conditions and heavy rains have begun impacting the DFW metroplex, heavy rains may lead to snow"; "[c]ity power outages need to be considered/factored towards the time requested for the extension"; she has only sixteen days in December, twenty days in January, and sixteen days in February in which to access legal databases; Appellees and their attorney have the advantage of "round the clock" access to legal databases; and that she would have completed her brief "before the end of December 2023" had Appellees' attorney "upheld/exercised the Tex.R.App.P. 6.6 and the Tex.R.Civ.P. 11."
On November 28, 2023, Appellees filed their motion to dismiss this appeal for want of prosecution because Gallant still had not filed her appellant's brief. We notified Gallant on December 14, 2023, that her appeal may be dismissed unless she filed on or before December 27, 2023, her brief along with a motion reasonably explaining her failure to file it in a timely fashion. See Tex.R.App.P. 10.5(b), 38.8(a)(1), 42.3(b). We received no brief from Gallant or attendant motion explaining its delay.
Instead, on December 21, 2023, Gallant filed a response to Appellees' motion to dismiss. In her response, Gallant asserts that Appellees have refused to furnish "98% of prima facie evidence" related to the underlying tax dispute. She has asked us on various occasions to compel Appellees to provide this evidence, and we have denied these requests. She explains that "[a]waiting for the 98% of prima facie evidence is the reason for seeking an extension to file the Appellant's brief." Because we have previously and explicitly denied her such relief, this explanation for her delayed brief does not hold water.
All told, Gallant has filed nearly twenty motions with this court. But despite her prolific motion filings and receiving nearly four months in deadline extensions, she has failed to file her appellant's brief and to provide us with a reasonable explanation for the delay. Accordingly, we grant Appellees' motion to dismiss and dismiss this appeal for want of prosecution. See Tex.R.App.P. 38.8(a)(1), 42.3(b), 43.2(f). Additionally, we deny all of Gallant's outstanding motions.