A recent Texas Lawyer story by Angela Morris, “Why Are Civil Defense Lawyers Thrilled the Texas House Passed This Bill?,” reports that, just as lawmakers are pushing to narrow Texas’ anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, the Texas House also passed a bill that would sweeten the deal for civil defense attorneys to make more use of a different type of motion to dismiss.
Under current law, this motion, known as the “91a motion to dismiss” because it’s located in Texas Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 91a, allows attorneys to argue for the dismissal of a case that has no basis in law or fact. There’s a mandatory loser-pays provision that says the prevailing party collects attorney fees from the losing party. Defendants have not used the motion too frequently because they don’t want to risk paying attorney fees to plaintiffs if they lose a dismissal fight.
House Bill 3300, which the Texas House passed 136-5, proposes a small but significant tweak to the law. In the loser-pays provision, it changes the word “shall” to “may,” which gives a judge discretion to decide to award fees. The bill heads to the Senate where, in the final weeks of the session, it must get a public hearing in committee, pass committee and pass the full Senate.
Texas Lawyer asked attorneys on Twitter whether this legislation, if passed, might lead defendants to file 91a motions to dismiss more often. Here are a handful of the tweets we got in reply, edited for style and grammar.
“Yes — no question. Loser-pays is the only disincentive to filing a 91a motion in every case. And defendants often waive their fee recovery from plaintiffs because courts are more likely to grant 91a dismissal if it doesn’t require saddling plaintiffs with fees,” tweeted Anne Johnson, a partner in Haynes and Boone in Dallas.
“As things stand, TRCP 91a creates a sort of game of chicken: A lot of defendants will file the motion but then pull it down before it is heard, unless they are almost 100% confident they will prevail. With mandatory fees, the risk of paying the other side money is just too high,” tweeted Christopher Kratovil, managing member of Dykema’s Dallas office.
“As someone who works more in federal court — where 12(b)(6) reigns — I’ve always thought 91[a]‘s mandatory fee-shifting was a big problem. This would be helpful. I suspect more plaintiff oriented folks strongly disagree,” tweeted Raffi Melkonian, a partner in Wright, Close & Barger in Houston.
“I’m against the mandatory fees provision. The fees usually aren’t too high, but it still discourages the use of an otherwise valuable tool,” tweeted Jadd Masso, a member of Clark Hill Strasburger in Dallas.
“This is a welcome change, though the Rule 91a standard itself should be clarified and improved,” tweeted Lee Whitesell, an associate with Hogan Lovells in Houston.