How the Sixth Court of Appeals repeatedly rejected David Alarid’s attempts to challenge his threatened imprisonment without deciding whether it was lawful.
October 18, 2026 | Lone Star Law Review
Article I, Section 18 of the Texas Constitution declares:
“No person shall ever be imprisoned for debt.”
Yet David J. Alarid faced up to six months in jail in a civil judgment collection dispute in Lamar County, Texas. He maintained that the trial court was ordering him to transfer property belonging to corporations, that he could not lawfully comply, and that he had been denied proper notice before an order directing his arrest was entered.
He turned to the Sixth Court of Appeals in Texarkana for relief.
Three times.
Each of the court’s three justices authored an opinion denying one of his petitions. Each identified procedural deficiencies. Not one reached the merits of his challenge to the underlying orders.
The result illustrates how procedural technicalities can prevent appellate courts from addressing the very questions they exist to resolve.
From a Civil Judgment to Threatened Imprisonment
The controversy arose from a civil judgment of approximately $220,000 in Evans v. Alarid, Cause No. 90984, in Lamar County.
On October 23, 2025, District Judge R. Wesley Tidwell found Alarid in civil contempt for disobeying orders concerning judgment collection and discovery. The court ordered 180 days of confinement, initially suspended on conditions requiring Alarid to provide records, execute deeds transferring corporate real estate to a receiver, and transfer vehicle titles.
On January 13, 2026, Tidwell entered another order finding continued noncompliance. He imposed an additional $25,000 sanction and directed issuance of a capias for Alarid’s arrest, authorizing confinement for up to 180 days. Withdrawal of the capias was conditioned on delivery of the required deeds.
The court found that Alarid owned the stock of two corporations involved in the property transfers and that another entity was itself a judgment debtor. Alarid disputed the court’s authority to compel conveyance of properties owned by corporations rather than by him individually.
He also challenged the circumstances of the January hearing.
According to his filings, Alarid was abroad receiving cancer treatment and was medically unable to travel. He alleged that notice of the January 8 Zoom hearing arrived without joining instructions and that he did not attend. Nevertheless, the resulting order recited that he had appeared pro se.
Those allegations have not been independently established, but they raised serious questions about notice, corporate property rights, and the lawful use of contempt.
Alarid filed motions attacking the arrest order. When those motions remained unresolved, he sought mandamus relief.
Three Petitions, Three Different Objections
First petition: Chief Justice Scott Stevens
On May 21, 2026, Chief Justice Scott Stevens denied Alarid’s first mandamus petition.
Stevens identified problems with the authentication of documents, the inclusion of materials apparently not filed in the trial court, and the wording of Alarid’s certification under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 52.3(k).
The petition was denied without any determination of whether the threatened imprisonment was lawful.
Alarid subsequently attempted to amend his filing, but reported being told that the proceeding was closed and that he needed to file a new petition.
Second petition: Justice Charles van Cleef
Alarid filed another mandamus petition in August, attempting to address the defects identified by Stevens.
On August 13, Justice Charles van Cleef denied the second petition.
This time, the court identified different deficiencies. Alarid’s declaration did not adequately establish personal knowledge for authenticating the supporting documents, and his petition failed to identify five trial court motions with sufficient record citations.
Once again, the court did not decide whether the underlying orders were lawful.
Third petition: Justice Jeff Rambin
Alarid tried again, filing a third petition on August 13.
He specifically identified the five motions previously questioned by van Cleef, supplied their record locations, and revised his declaration to address the court’s concerns about personal knowledge.
On August 31, Justice Jeff Rambin denied the third petition.
This time, the problem concerned where Alarid had signed his unsworn declaration.
The declaration stated that he was outside the United States, but its signature block gave his Texas address rather than identifying the foreign location of execution. The court concluded that the declaration did not substantially comply with statutory requirements.
In a footnote, Rambin characterized the discrepancy using the expression about trying to “have cake” and “eat it too.”
Thus, a man who reported receiving cancer treatment abroad while facing arrest in Texas received an appellate opinion discussing the geographic information in his declaration, complete with a cake analogy.
The legality of his threatened imprisonment remained unexamined.
The Constitutional Questions the Court Never Reached
Texas law permits courts to enforce lawful property turnover orders through contempt. The constitutional prohibition on imprisonment for debt does not immunize judgment debtors from obeying such orders.
But contempt has limits.
A person cannot lawfully be subjected to coercive confinement for failing to perform an act that is impossible for him to perform. Orders compelling transfers of corporate property also raise questions about ownership and legal authority.
In Ex parte Chambers, 898 S.W.2d 257 (Tex. 1995), the Texas Supreme Court granted habeas relief to a corporate officer held in contempt where the corporation’s inability to comply had been conclusively established.
In Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011), the United States Supreme Court recognized due process protections concerning ability to comply before imprisonment for civil contempt.
Neither decision establishes that Alarid’s particular contempt order was unlawful. Both demonstrate why his allegations warranted serious consideration.
The Sixth Court never decided those questions because it never reached them.
What the Texas Supreme Court Says About Procedural Technicalities
In Horton v. Stovall, 591 S.W.3d 567 (Tex. 2019), the Texas Supreme Court reversed an appellate decision that relied on readily correctable record-citation deficiencies without allowing correction.
The Supreme Court emphasized that appellate courts should reach the merits whenever reasonably possible.
That decision involved an ordinary appeal, not an original mandamus proceeding. The rules governing mandamus do not presently provide the same express protection against dismissal for correctable defects.
Remarkably, the Supreme Court had already considered addressing that very problem.
In February 2023, following a referral from the Supreme Court, its Appellate Rules Subcommittee recommended amending Rule 52.8 to prohibit denying or dismissing original proceedings because of formal procedural defects without first providing notice and a reasonable opportunity to correct them.
The recommendation was not adopted.
Alarid’s experience illustrates precisely why it was proposed.
If his defects could be corrected by preparing another complete mandamus petition, why could he not have been permitted to correct them in the existing proceeding?
Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 52.7(b) expressly allows supplementation of mandamus records. Yet Alarid’s attempts to secure review resulted in three proceedings, three procedural opinions, and no decision on his substantive claims.
Procedural Rigmarole as Judicial Avoidance
There is another consequence of resolving cases on procedural technicalities: appellate courts can avoid deciding substantive questions that might expose their reasoning to reversal.
Had the Sixth Court expressly upheld Alarid’s threatened confinement despite an established inability to comply, its reasoning could have been scrutinized under Texas Supreme Court precedent.
Instead, the opinions concerned certifications, declarations, record citations, and signature locations.
Procedural denials are themselves subject to higher review. But they create an additional obstacle. Rather than directly challenging an appellate ruling on constitutional rights, the litigant must first contest the appellate court’s refusal to reach those rights.
That effect does not require proof that the justices deliberately sought to avoid Supreme Court review. It is a consequence of how the proceedings were disposed of.
And in Alarid’s case, all three justices participated in that pattern, each authoring one of the denials.
The court was entitled to require a reliable record. The question is why it repeatedly chose denial rather than giving Alarid a reasonable opportunity to correct the deficiencies it identified.
The Texas Supreme Court has recognized the importance of resolving cases on their merits and has considered extending protections against procedural dismissals to original proceedings.
Meanwhile, a litigant facing a possible six months in jail received three opinions explaining why his paperwork was insufficient.
An appellate court should not need three proceedings to identify three successive technical defects that might have been corrected in one.
Procedural rules exist to facilitate the administration of justice, not to become an endless series of obstacles to it.
David Alarid sought review of orders threatening his liberty.
The Sixth Court gave him three explanations of how he had asked incorrectly.
It never answered whether the threatened imprisonment was lawful.
Sources: Sixth Court of Appeals opinions in Nos. 06-26-00071-CV, 06-26-00094-CV, and 06-26-00097-CV; the October 23, 2025 contempt order and January 13, 2026 sanctions order in Lamar County Cause No. 90984; Alarid’s appellate filings; and the cited Texas and United States Supreme Court authorities. Alarid’s disputed factual allegations are identified as such. The available records do not establish that he was actually incarcerated.