USA – TEXAS Trends and Developments Contributed by: Daniella Main, Alix Allison, Richard Guiltinan and Catherine G. Pritchard, Vartabedian Hester & Haynes LLP
matters, and fraudulent transfer actions. During law school, Catherine served as a summer law clerk for the US Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator John Cornyn. She also interned for Judge Henry E Hudson in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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The Commercial Litigation Landscape in Texas Texas has entered a new era in commercial litigation with the institution of the Texas Business Court (the “Business Court”), which has now been operational for a year. The Business Court currently operates across five divisions: the First Division in Dallas, the Third Divi- sion in Austin, the Fourth Division in San Antonio, the Eighth Division in Fort Worth and the Eleventh Division in Houston. Appeals from these divisions are exclu- sively heard by the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, locat- ed in Austin. These divisions serve the state’s largest commercial hubs, and all five cities rank among the 15 most populous in the United States – underscoring the placement and purpose of the Business Court. In the short year it has been operational, the Business Court has seen over 200 cases filed, with Houston leading in volume, followed by Dallas. During the 2025 Texas legislative session, the Texas Government Code and Texas Business Organizations Code were amended to expand the Business Court’s jurisdiction and modernise the state’s corporate law
provisions to position Texas as a leader in corporate law. The Business Court’s civil jurisdiction is defined in Chapter 25A of the Texas Government Code. For commercial litigation disputes, the Business Court’s jurisdiction has been expanded through a series of reforms effective 1 September 2025, including the fol- lowing. • The Business Court’s threshold for amount in con- troversy requirement has been lowered for qualified transactions from USD10 million to USD5 million (Tex. Gov’t Code § 25A.004 (d)). • Recent amendments have broadened the definition of qualified transactions to mean a transaction or “series of related transactions” in which the aggre- gate value meets the amount in controversy, which is now USD5 million (Tex. Gov’t Code § 25A.001 (14)). • The Business Court can now hear actions aris- ing out of or related to “ownership, use, licensing, lease, installation, or performance of intellectual property”, which includes “computer software,
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