Sabine Gas Trans. Co. v. Winnie Pipeline Co., 15 S.W.3d 199 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2000, no pet.).
Plaintiff sued Defendant and Executors of a deceased defendant’s
estate alleging improprieties with respect to a contract. Executors
moved to transfer the case to the probate court in which the deceased
defendant’s estate was being administered under Probate Code § 5A(d).
The court granted the motion and consolidated the contract claims with
the probate proceeding. After Plaintiff settled with Executors, the
probate court granted Plaintiff’s motion to have its claims against
Defendant dismissed without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.
Defendant appealed.
The appellate court agreed that the probate court’s dismissal was
erroneous but affirmed the dismissal because the error was harmless. The
court began by recognizing that the instant case was different from
Goodman v. Summit at West Rim, Ltd., 952 S.W.2d 930 (Tex. App.—Austin
1997, no pet.), because the deceased defendant’s estate was still a
party to the probate proceeding even after the probate court dismissed
the ancillary and pendent claims. The key issue in the instant case is
whether “a probate court abuse[s] its discretion by holding that it
loses jurisdiction over claims which it has ancillary or pendent
jurisdiction when no other claims before the court have any relationship
to those claims even though the estate administration is still pending?”
Sabine at 201.
The court held that the probate court abused its discretion by finding
that it lost jurisdiction over those claims while the estate was still
pending because the statute does not expressly so provide. However, the
court in its discretion may “dismiss the claims based on a finding that
its continued entertainment of them would not promote ‘judicial
efficiency and economy’” under Probate Code § 5A(d). Sabine at 201-02.
Accordingly, the probate court’s error was harmless because it could
have dismissed the claims without finding that it lost jurisdiction.
Moral: A court continues to have jurisdiction over claims which no
longer have any relationship to the estate being administered if the
estate administration is still pending. However, the court has the
discretion to dismiss these claims.