Is an Appeal a New Case?

If you enjoyed David Coale & Ben Taylor, Judgment Rendition in Texas, 75 Baylor L. Rev. 354 (2023), then you will enjoy Serafine v. Crump‘s resolution of whether an appeal begins a new “case”:

[T]he question is whether the proceeding “commences” a new civil action or “maintains” the original one. In other words, an appeal to an intermediate appellate court and a petition for review to a supreme court are within the same “litigation” if they are a part of the same “civil action” that is simply “pending” in different courts. A long and unbroken line of our precedent answers this question clearly and unequivocally: an appeal is simply the “continuation of the action in suit brought in the trial court.”

No. 23-0272 (Tex. June 21, 2024).