A DWOP notice means the case is on a dismissal docket and will be dismissed unless somebody gives the court a reason not to. It is not a punishment and it is usually not personal — it is docket control. But it ends a case just as completely as losing one.
There are two different motions here and they are not interchangeable. Before dismissal, a motion to retain. After, a verified motion to reinstate — with a hard deadline of thirty days.
Where is the case right now?
Retain and reinstate are different motions with different standards and different deadlines. This decides which one you are actually filing.
What date was the dismissal order signed?
We hold the published Texas case law in our own index and query it directly. No vendor sits between the question and the answer. That is the reason a discrete motion can carry a price on a web page instead of an hourly rate and a hope.
Pulled from our index for this mechanism and read by a lawyer before it went on this page. A green check means the decision is on point for this posture. It is not a statement that the case has been shepardized, and it is not a representation about its current precedential standing.
Counts are the number of later decisions in our index that cite the case. A high count means a case has been used, not that it is good law. Nothing on this page is a citator signal and we will not show one until it is produced by reading opinions rather than counting them.
A verified motion to reinstate must be filed within thirty days of the order being signed. That deadline is jurisdictional in effect — miss it and the trial court generally loses the power to bring the case back at all, whatever the reason.
Sworn, not merely signed. An unverified motion to reinstate has been treated as ineffective, which is a brutal way to lose a case twice.
A timely filed motion keeps the trial court's power alive well past the usual thirty days, which buys room to be heard.
Lack of the notice and hearing the rule requires is its own ground and it does not depend on your excuse being a good one.
Limitations may have run while the case was pending. Assuming you can simply sue again is how a dismissal becomes permanent.
Or send nothing but the document and let us find the rest. Dropping the file at the top of this page is the whole first step.
We will read it and tell you what we would do if we represented you on this single task — what we would file, on what ground, and what it would cost to have us do it.