AUSTIN - Whether Texas State University was timely served in a lawsuit alleging a woman was thrown from a golf has been left to a lower court to decide.
Court records show Hannah Tanner was injured on Oct. 4, 2014, when she was thrown from a golf cart on the university campus. Dakota Scott, a friend of Tanner’s and a university employee, had been driving the golf cart.
Invoking the Texas Tort Claims Act, Tanner filed suit against the university, the Texas State University System, and Scott on Sept. 29, 2016 – less than a week before the two-year limitations period for personal-injury actions was set to expire.
On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court found that although Tanner filed the suit with a week to spare, she did not serve Texas State University until several years after the limitations had run.
In its plea to the jurisdiction, the university asserted that Tanner failed to use diligence in effecting service on it so long after limitations had expired.
The trial court granted the plea and an appellate court reversed, holding that untimely service does not implicate jurisdiction.
“We accordingly hold that the statute of limitations, including the requirement of timely service, is jurisdictional in suits against governmental entities,” the Supreme Court opines. “The University’s plea to the jurisdiction was therefore a proper vehicle to address Tanner’s alleged failure to exercise diligence in serving the University.”
Court records show the university had also filed an alternative motion for summary judgment that relied on the same arguments about timeliness, but the court of appeals held, for procedural reasons, that the motion was not part of the appeal.
“Rather than resolve the timeliness of Tanner’s suit in the first instance, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and remand the case for that court to do so,” the opinion states. “We leave it to the court of appeals, following supplemental briefing from the parties if that court deems it necessary, to determine in the first instance if Tanner’s service on Scott excuses her from the duty to serve the University, diligently or otherwise.
“The court of appeals’ judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court.”
Supreme Court case No. 22-0291