Docket Sheets

City of Dallas v. Disney, an opinion focusing on the law-of-the-case doctrine, offered this practice tip about the new record-assembly rule and the docket sheet:

[T]he Cities in this case filed an appendix in lieu of a clerk’s record under the new Appellate Rule 34.5a, see TEX. R. APP. P. 34.5a, but did not include a copy of the trial court’s docket in the appendix. We therefore do not know whether the trial court entered an order denying the motion for limited stay or whether it was implicitly denied when the trial court entered the order granting the Streaming Providers’ Rule 91a motion to dismiss and the final judgment. For the purposes of this appeal, that is a distinction without a difference, since an implicit denial has the same legal effect as an explicit one. Nevertheless, we include this practice tip for appellate practitioners before this Court of the potential value of the docket sheet.

Unlike Rule 34.5, which sets forth the required contents of the clerk’s record, Rule 34.5a does not require that the party filing an appendix include a docket sheet. Compare TEX. R. APP. P. 34.5a(e)–(f) with TEX. R. APP. P. 34.5(a)(3). Although the trial court’s docket sheet rarely impacts the outcome of an appeal, it is often useful because it provides context to the items that appear in the clerk’s record. From the docket sheet, we can glean the dates of trial court filings, hearings, and orders that were excluded from our record. It is also the docket sheet that often gives us cause to question whether a supplement to the record should be made. See TEX. R. APP. P. 34.5(c) (providing that any party, the trial court, or this court, can request supplementation of the clerk’s record).

No. 05-24-00712-CV (June 22, 2026).