As you’ll recall, my lawyer, Robert Newton, filed my “petition” on March 3, 2022. (The document you file to initiate a lawsuit is called a “complaint” in most states, but in Texas it’s known as a “petition.”) The state itself doesn’t actually conduct trials, that’s up to each county. So Robert filed the petition with the District Clerk in Collin County, Texas, which is where I live.
There are more than a dozen district courts in Collin County. My case was assigned to the 471st District Court, Judge Andrea Bouressa presiding. That assignment possibly was made at random – but the 471st District Court was created in 2019 specifically to prioritize civil cases, so maybe that’s why my case ended up there. Like so much I’ve learned about the courts, the process of assigning cases to courts is not exactly transparent.
In Texas, District Court Judges are elected on a countywide basis. This means that all of the District Court Judges in Collin County are Republicans – because every countywide election in Collin County is always won by a Republican. (In 2024, for example, six judges were up for election in Collin County. Every one of them was a Republican, and every one of them ran unopposed.)
If a judge retires or dies, a new judge is appointed by the governor to serve the remainder of that court’s four-year term. Every governor of Texas since 1995 has been a Republican, suggesting that all Collin County District Court judges will be Republicans for many years to come.
But if you’re trying to get the court to recognize that you have an easement across a neighbor’s property, does it matter whether the judge on your case is a Republican or a Democrat?
I wouldn’t have thought so, but subsequent events have made me question that opinion. But I’m getting ahead of my story…
Anyway, my petition was given the case number (sometimes called the “cause number”) 471-01040-2022:
- 471 is the number of the District Court.
- 01040 is the sequential case number for that year.
- 2022 is the year in which the petition was filed.
If a case is transferred to a different court (as later happened in another one of my cases – twice), its three-digit court-number prefix changes, but the rest of the case number remains unchanged forever.
Initial Disclosures
In Texas, one of the first things you have to do if you’re involved in a lawsuit is to send “Initial Disclosures” to your opponents, providing such basic information as your name and address, the legal theories and facts behind your claims or defenses, any documents that are relevant to the case, and so on. The disclosures must be filed within 30 days of the date that the defendants filed their answer to the petition. So Robert sent my Plaintiff’s Initial Disclosures to Tommy on May 2, 2022, and Tommy sent Sonia’s Defendant’s Initial Disclosures to us on May 31.
But wait, you say: Wasn’t Tommy supposed to send his disclosures within 30 days of filing his answer on April 4? And didn’t that mean that his disclosures were due on May 4? When Tommy finally submitted his disclosures nearly four weeks after that, didn’t that appear to violate Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 194.2(a), which says: “A party must make their initial disclosures within 30 days after the filing of the first answer”?
So, what were the repercussions of Tommy missing that deadline just a couple of months into the lawsuit?
There weren’t any. And I wasn’t familiar enough with the rules at the time to realize that Tommy had missed the deadline.
My lawyer either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Or maybe lawyers don’t drop a dime on other lawyers who miss deadlines out of some kind of sense of professional courtesy.
Document Links
Plaintiff’s Initial Disclosures
Defendant’s Initial Disclosures
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