Texas Business Court Decisions – Monday, February 10, 2025
No. 24-BC01B-0010 Primexx Energy Opportunity Fund, LP, et. al v. Primexx Energy Corporation, et al. 24-bc01b-0010.pdf
[Judge Whitehill, First Division]
Jurisdiction. Plaintiffs in this action assert direct and indirect liability claims against the defendants for breaching statutory and contract duties in forcing a sale of the partnership’s business to a third party. This is the third action they have filed concerning the sale. The first action was filed in Dallas County; this third action was filed in Dallas County and then transferred to the 298th Judicial District; it was subsequently transferred to the Business Court. Before the Court are the Blackstone defendants’ special appearances. These appearances were denied on January 17, with an opinion to follow.
The Blackstone defendants filed answers in the first action without filing special appearances, and moved to dismiss based on a TAPA forum selection clause. That motion was granted. By making a general appearance in the first action, by filing an answer, without a jurisdictional challenge, and by then seeking affirmative relief, the Blackstone defendants waived their right to object to personal jurisdiction and consented to litigate the claims in the court where they were filed; by filing their general appearance in the first case, the Blackstone defendants acknowledged that these claims were properly brought against these defendants in a Texas court; as the new third action is essentially a continuation of the first action, with the same parties (with one addition) and the same claims arising out of the same transaction, the Blackstone defendants’ general appearance in the first action waived their right to object to personal jurisdiction in the virtually identical third action. The Blackstone defendants’ special appearances in this third action are denied.
No. 25-BC03A-0001 Safelease Insurance Services LLC v. Storable, Inc., et al. 25-bc03a-0001.pdf
[J. Andrews, Third Division]
Jurisdiction. Plaintiff provides insurance to self-storage facilities and defendants license facility-management software to such facilities. Plaintiff had been able to access information maintained on the defendants’ software as an authorized user on its customer’s accounts, without a separate access agreement with defendants. In late 2024, defendant restricted plaintiff’s access to the software platforms, and plaintiff sued defendant in Travis County in December, 2024. After the district court denied plaintiff’s request for a temporary injunction, plaintiff removed the case to the Business Court and asked for a TRO and a temporary injunction to allow it to access defendant’s software. The Business Court denied the TRO, and defendants moved to remand the case to Travis County.
The court holds, first, that plaintiff’s removal of the case to Business Court was timely; the thirty-day removal deadlines in Section 25A.006 and Rule 355 do not begin running until the suit is filed; the court rejects defendants’ argument that plaintiff knew all relevant facts concerning Business Court jurisdiction before it filed suit in Travis County and that the deadline should have begun to run before the suit was filed. Second, the case falls within the court’s jurisdiction under Section 25A.004(b), (d), and (e) of the Texas Government Code in that the amount in controversy exceeds the $5 million and $10 million minimums in those provisions even though plaintiff did not seek an award of damages; the Texas Supreme Court and the Business Court have both held that actions in which damages were not sought nevertheless can satisfy the jurisdictional amount-in-controversy minimums. Defendants’ motion to remand is denied.