In the Interest of J.F.C.
- Court
- Texas Supreme Court
- Decided
- December 31, 2002
- Docket
- No. 01-0571
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Texas
Cited 4,611 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- holding that a legal sufficiency review should "not consider evidence that a factfinder reasonably could have disbelieved." — Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Garza (2004)
- holding that the concept of fundamental error cannot be used to bypass rule 279 — In Re WJH (2003)
- holding that clear and convincing evidence burden of proof in termination cases alters the appellate standard of legal sufficiency review — John Willard Howard v. State (2004)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
Justice OWEN delivered the opinion of the Court in which Chief Justice PHILLIPS, Justice HECHT, Justice JEFFERSON, and Justice SMITH joined.
After a jury trial, the trial court in this case rendered a judgment terminating the rights of both the mother and father to three of their children. A divided court of appeals reversed and remanded, holding that omission of an instruction that termination must be in the children’s best interest from material parts of the jury charge was fundamental error that could be raised for the first time on appeal, and that the error probably caused rendition of an improper judgment.[1] We hold that:
1) although the trial court’s charge was erroneous because it omitted the children’s best interest as a prerequisite for termination in material parts of the charge, Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 279 requires us to supply the omitted finding in support of the judgment because there is either an express or deemed finding by the trial court that termination is in the children’s best interest;
Cite this
In the Interest of J.F.C., 96 S.W.3d 256 (2002)Read the full opinion
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