§ 27.008.Appeal

The provision that stops the chapter from being defeated by inaction.

Subsection (a): if a court does not rule on a motion to dismiss in the time prescribed by the ruling provision, the motion is considered to have been denied by operation of law and the moving party may appeal.

Without that, a judge who never ruled at all would be unreviewable. There is no order to appeal from, and the movant would be left in the litigation the chapter was designed to end early — which is exactly the outcome a reluctant court could produce by doing nothing.

Deeming the silence a denial converts inaction into an appealable event.

Subsection (b) requires speed on appeal. An appellate court shall expedite an appeal or other writ, whether interlocutory or not, from a trial court order on the motion or from the failure to rule in time.

The interlocutory appeal is what gives the chapter its force. An ordinary denial of a dispositive motion is not appealable until final judgment, by which point the party has borne the cost of the litigation the motion was meant to avoid. Here the appeal comes immediately.

"Whether interlocutory or not" and "or other writ" between them cover every route by which the ruling might reach an appellate court, so the expediting obligation cannot be sidestepped by the form of the proceeding.

Subsection (c) was repealed in 2013. It had provided that the appeal must be filed on or before the 60th day after the order was signed, and its removal moved that timing to the appellate rules.