Byke v. City of Corpus Christi

I respectfully dissent. The majority says that if you do not file your first petition with properly joined parties whose claims aggregate the minimum jurisdictional amount, the trial court can do nothing but dismiss the lawsuit. I disagree.

The factual background of the case has been properly set out in the majority's opinion. The sole question is legislative construction of a statute whose express purpose was to give a method of computing the amount in controversy for jurisdictional purposes, where two or more parties are properly joined in one suit.

Title 40 of our statutes concerns our…