in Re Eric L. Thomas ( 2016 )

In The
Court of Appeals
Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont
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NO. 09-16-00138-CV
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IN RE ERIC L. THOMAS
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Original Proceeding
435th District Court of Montgomery County, Texas
Trial Cause No. 13-12-12862-CV
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MEMORANDUM OPINION
Whether the trial court was authorized to amend its original order of civil
commitment to conform with the changes the Legislature made when it amended
the Health and Safety Code lies at the heart of the complaints the Relator raises in
his petition for writ of mandamus. See Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§
841.001-.151 (West 2010 & Supp. 2015) (the SVP statute). In this proceeding, Eric
L. Thomas contends the trial court abused its discretion by amending an agreed
order of civil commitment to change the agency in charge of supervising his
treatment from the Office of Violent Sex Offender Management (OVSOM) to the
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Texas Civil Commitment Office (TCCO), and to change the type of treatment he
was receiving from outpatient treatment to a tiered treatment program available
only at a centralized facility in a city in the Texas Panhandle. In three issues,
Thomas argues: (1) the trial court denied his statutory right to outpatient treatment
by ordering him to participate in a tiered treatment program; (2) the trial court
violated his constitutional rights by amending the original commitment order,
rendered before the date the Legislature changed the SVP statute; and (3) the trial
court denied Thomas’s due process rights by failing to enforce the consent
judgment, which Thomas contends should have been treated as a binding contract.
Because Thomas has not shown that the trial court abused its discretion by
amending its prior order, we deny Thomas’s request asking that the trial court be
required to withdraw its amended order.
In January 2014, Thomas agreed to a final judgment, which contained a
finding that he is a sexually violent predator. Under the terms of the Agreed Final
Judgment, the trial court civilly committed Thomas “in accordance with Health &
Safety Code § 841.081 for outpatient treatment and supervision[,]” with his
treatment to be coordinated by a case manager commencing upon the day the
Texas Department of Corrections released Thomas from prison. Among the
various requirements of the Agreed Order of Commitment, Thomas was required
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to reside in supervised housing at a Texas residential facility under contract with
OVSOM or at a location or facility approved by OVSOM, to “exactingly
participate in and comply with the specific course of treatment provided by”
OVSOM, and to “comply with all written requirements” of OVSOM and the case
manager.
After the trial court rendered the Agreed Final Judgment and the Agreed
Order of Commitment in Thomas’s SVP case, the Legislature made a number of
changes to the SVP statute, including one changing the agency the Legislature
placed in charge of supervising the treatment of individuals who were determined
to be sexually violent predators. See Act of May 21, 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., ch. 845,
§§ 1-44, 2015 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. 2700, 2700-12 (West). The changes that the
Legislature made to the SVP statute were effective as of June 17, 2015. Id.
However, Thomas had been found to be a sexually violent predator by the time the
changes went into effect. See generally Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §
841.081(a) (West Supp. 2015). Under the program supervised by OVSOM, and
under the terms of the Agreed Order of Commitment, Thomas had received
outpatient treatment beginning in January 2015 that was being supervised by
OVSOM. In October 2015, based on the changes to the SVP statute made by the
Legislature in 2015, the trial court amended the Agreed Order of Commitment.
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The trial court’s authority to conform its orders to reflect legislative changes
is the subject of Thomas’s petition. The Amended Order, which the trial court
rendered in October 2015, states that the TCCO “shall provide [Thomas] with
appropriate sex offender treatment and necessary supervision pursuant to [section
841.0831 of the Health and Safety Code,]” requires that Thomas “reside where
instructed by the TCCO,” and orders that Thomas “participate in and comply with
the TCCO sex offender treatment program[.]” In contrast, the Agreed Order of
Commitment required that Thomas reside in supervised housing at a facility under
contract with the OVSOM and that Thomas participate in a course of treatment
provided by OVSOM.
In his petition, Thomas argues that the Agreed Final Judgment concluded his
SVP case and amounted to a binding contract. According to Thomas, the trial court
could not alter the Agreed Final Judgment without violating his rights to due
process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United State Constitution and
article I, section 19 of the Texas Constitution. See generally U.S. Const. amend.
XIV; Tex. Const. art. I, § 19. To resolve the issues Thomas raises in his petition,
we must decide whether the terms of the Agreed Final Judgment were binding on
the trial court such that the court could not change any of the Agreed Final
Judgment’s terms.
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With respect to agreed judgments generally, the Texas Supreme Court has
explained that agreed judgments are treated like other judgments, noting:
An agreed judgment has the same effect as any court judgment. See
Wagner v. Warnasch, 156 Tex. 334, 295 S.W.2d 890, 893 (1956).
When a judgment is rendered by consent it has neither less nor greater
force or effect than it would have had it been rendered after litigation,
except to the extent that the consent excuses error and operates to end
all controversy between the parties. See Wagner, 295 S.W.2d at 893.
An agreed judgment should be construed in the same manner as a
contract. See Gracia v. RC Cola-7-Up Bottling Co., 667 S.W.2d 517,
519-20 (Tex. 1984). Thus, the court will examine and consider the
entire instrument so that none of the provisions will be rendered
meaningless. See R & P Enters. v. LaGuarta, Gavrel & Kirk, Inc., 596
S.W.2d 517, 519 (Tex. 1980).
Gulf Ins. Co. v. Burns Motors, Inc., 22 S.W.3d 417, 422 (Tex. 2000). In Thomas’s
case, the Agreed Final Judgment and Order of Commitment gave the OVSOM the
power to determine the specific course of treatment that Thomas would receive
upon his release from prison, and it allowed OVSOM to designate the location for
the supervised housing where Thomas would be housed. However, the SVP statute
did not contemplate that a judgment in an SVP case would prohibit the court from
subsequently altering the details of the treatment that a person would receive while
the person, who is in treatment, remained subject to the trial court’s authority to
control the details of his case. When Thomas agreed to the terms in the Agreed
Final Judgment, the Health and Safety Code provided that the trial court could
modify the requirements of civil commitment orders rendered based on such
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judgments “at any time after notice to each affected party to the proceedings and a
hearing.” Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 841.082(e) (West Supp. 2015). In
other words, when Thomas agreed to the terms of the Agreed Final Judgment that
is at issue here, the statute contemplated that the court might need to change the
requirements of his original commitment order. See id. Moreover, we note that
neither the Agreed Final Judgment nor the Agreed Order of Commitment expressly
state that the terms of the Agreed Order of Commitment could not be modified. See
id. In this case, the negotiations leading to Thomas’s agreement to the Agreed
Final Judgment and Agreed Order of Commitment do not show that Thomas had a
settled expectation that the trial court would never change any of the details that
were pertinent to the requirements concerning his treatment.
Additionally, the documents Thomas executed when he agreed that he
required treatment for his condition as a sexually violent predator do not contain a
provision that prevented the court from amending the commitment order. The
Agreed Final Judgment in Thomas’s case specifically references the Agreed Order
of Commitment, and the Agreed Order of Commitment is an order that absent an
express provision prohibiting its amendment was subject to being amended. See id.
In construing the meaning of writings that reference other documents, courts look
to the documents that are specifically referenced in the parties’ agreement to
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resolve disputes that arise over what an agreement means. See Henderson v.
Shanks, 449 S.W.3d 834, 838 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2014, pet. denied),
cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 46 (2015). (separate orders signed in the same case on the
same day for the same purpose are construed together); see also Kartsotis v. Bloch,
No. 05-14-01294-CV, 2016 WL 3660271, at *6 (Tex. App.—Dallas July 7, 2016,
no pet. h.) (“Separate writings may be construed together if the connection appears
on the face of the documents by express reference or by internal evidence of their
unity.”). When the terms of the Agreed Final Judgment and Agreed Order of
Commitment are examined together, it is clear the parties contemplated that the
trial court retained the right to modify the commitment order on matters that might
subsequently arise regarding the details of Thomas’s treatment.
For example, the terms of the Agreed Order of Commitment reflect that the
parties were aware that Thomas would be required to remain in a sex offender
treatment program until such time as his behavioral abnormality had changed to
such an extent that he was no longer likely to engage in another predatory act of
sexual violence. The terms of the Agreed Final Judgment and the Agreed Order of
Commitment contain nothing to indicate that the parties had a settled expectation
that OVSOM, the agency being funded by the State in 2014 to supervise the
sexually violent predator treatment program, would always be the agency the State
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funded to supervise the program. We are not persuaded by Thomas’s arguments
that the agreement he made with the State contemplated that the trial court was not
authorized to ever change the commitment order regarding the type of treatment or
the agency who would be in charge of supervising various details that concern his
treatment.
Thomas also contends that the Legislature did not intend the changes it made
to the Health and Safety Code to apply to civil commitment proceedings that had
been instituted before June 17, 2015, the date the changes the Legislature made to
the SVP statute went into effect. See 2015 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. at 2711. We
rejected this same argument in In re Williams. See No. 09-16-00087-CV, 2016 WL
4249175, at *1 (Tex. App.—Beaumont Aug. 11, 2016, orig. proceeding). The
subsection that applies in Thomas’s case is subsection 40(b), which states that a
civil commitment requirement imposed before the effective date of the act must be
modified to conform to the amended version of the act. See 2015 Tex. Sess. Law
Serv. at 2711. Because subsection 40(b) required the trial court to amend orders
like the order that placed Thomas in a treatment program, the trial court was well
within its discretion when it acted to amend its order. See id.; see also In re
Williams, 2016 WL 4249175, at *1.
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Thomas further argues that the 2015 amendments to the SVP statute cannot
be applied to him retroactively without upsetting his interest in receiving outpatient
treatment and without violating his rights to due process of law under the
Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 16
of the Texas Constitution. We recently rejected a similar argument in In re
Commitment of May, an appeal in which we rejected complaints about the
retroactive nature of these same amendments to the sexually violent predator
statute. In re Commitment of May, No. 09-15-00513-CV, 2016 WL 4040186, at
**1-9 (Tex. App.—Beaumont July 28, 2016, no pet. h.). For the reasons that we
explained in May, we conclude that amendments can be applied retroactively in
Thomas’s case without violating his due process rights. Id. at **4-8.
We are also not persuaded that Thomas had a settled expectation when he
agreed to a final judgment that contemplated he would be receiving outpatient
treatment. When Thomas agreed to the terms of the judgment on which he relies,
section 841.082 of the Texas Health and Safety Code required a civilly committed
sexually violent predator to reside in a residential facility that was under contract
with or that had been approved by the office supervising his sex offender
treatment. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 841.082. In Thomas’s case, the
Agreed Order of Commitment required Thomas to reside in supervised housing at
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a location designated by OVSOM. See Act of May 23, 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., ch.
1201, § 8, 2011 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. 3197, 3200 (West) (amended 2015, current
version at Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 841.082 (West Supp. 2015)). Thus,
when Thomas became subject to the Agreed Order of Commitment, his
expectation was that an agency designated by the State would determine where he
would reside and determine the details of the kind of treatment that he would be
provided. See May, 2016 WL 4040186, at *8. He did not expect to be housed in a
particular location, and he should have expected that the location where he was to
receive treatment might change. And, all details regarding his treatment were
subject to the court’s authority to modify its prior orders. See Tex. Health & Safety
Code Ann. § 841.082(e). Thus, Thomas had no settled expectation that the trial
court would not replace the agency that it originally put in charge of supervising
his housing and treatment when he entered into the Agreed Final Judgment that
resolved his case. See May, 2016 WL 4040186, at *8. Additionally, the
Legislature’s determination that sexually violent predators could obtain better
results in a tiered treatment program justifies the State’s need to treat these
individuals in a centralized location. See id.
After reviewing Thomas’s arguments, we conclude that Thomas has not
shown that the trial court abused its discretion by amending the Agreed Order of
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Commitment. See Williams, 2016 WL 4249175, at **1-2; see also In re Prudential
Ins. Co. of Am., 148 S.W.3d 124, 135-36 (Tex. 2004) (orig. proceeding); Walker v.
Packer, 827 S.W.2d 833, 839-40 (Tex. 1992) (orig. proceeding). We deny
Thomas’s petition seeking mandamus relief. See Tex. R. App. P. 52.8.
PETITION DENIED.
PER CURIAM
Submitted on May 12, 2016
Opinion Delivered August 25, 2016
Before McKeithen, C.J., Kreger and Horton, JJ.
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