The defendants in Katy Venture, Ltd. v. Cremona Bistro Corp., No. 14-0629, July 24, 2015, had failed to update the address of their registered agent with the Texas Secretary of State, resulting in the taking of a default judgment against them. Some evidence was presented, however, that plaintiff knew of a more recent address for defendants and failed to inform the trial court of that address as required by Rule 239a, Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, after taking the default judgment.
Defendants failed to receive notice of the default judgment in time to file a motion for new trial, and instead initiated a bill of review procedure. The trial court denied the bill of review by summary judgment, which was affirmed by the court of appeals.
In reversing the court of appeals and remanding to the trial court for further proceedings, the Supreme Court held that misleading the court by giving the wrong "last known mailing address" will make a default judgment subject to a bill of review.
Because the defendants asserted a due process violation for failure to receive notice of the default judgment under Rule 239a, the law required them to raise a genuine issue of material fact only with respect to their lack of fault or negligence in failing to receive notice of the default judgment in order to survive plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Some evidence existed that defendants had notified plaintiff of their new address and therefore a genuine issue of material fact existed whether defendants' negligence had contributed to their failure to receive notice of the default judgment, precluding summary judgment.
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