The Houston [14th] Court of Appeals granted mandamus relief to a defendant in a wrongful death case after trial court ordered overbroad and irrelevant discovery.
In re Family Dollar Stores, Inc. and Family Dollar Stores of Texas, LLC (No. 14-25-00668-CV; December 9, 2025) arose from an altercation at a Family Dollar store in Houston between an alleged shoplifter and a store employee, who shot and killed the perpetrator. The decedent’s father sued the company under negligence and gross negligence, seeking survival damages. Plaintiff claimed that Family Dollar failed to train and supervise its employees and tolerated a “storewide culture of violence toward shoplifters.” The trial court Plaintiff’s motion to compel discovery of all records of incident reports from April 2020 to April 2023 for all Family Dollar locations in Texas and across the country. The order further required Family Dollars to produce all documentation with dates and identification of employees involved in shooting incidents at any Family Dollar location nationwide between August 2022 and August 2025. Family Dollar petitioned for mandamus relief.
In a per curiam opinion, the court granted Family Dollar’s petition. Family Dollar contended that the trial court abused its discretion in compelling it to produce the requested documents on grounds of irrelevancy, overbreadth, and undue burden. As to overbreadth, the court determined that the trial court’s order was not properly tailored with regard to time, place, or subject matter. For example, in a similar case, K Mart Corp. v. Sanderson 937 S.w.2d 429 (Tex. 1996) (orig. proceeding), SCOTX found overbroad a discovery order requiring K Mart to produce the date and offense type of any criminal conduct that occurred in the K Mart store or parking lot of the shopping center in the past 7 years. Observing that the order at issue here was far broader than that, the court pointed out that the order covered instances, such as “sexual misconduct by employees,” and “workplace disputes between employees, as well as personal disputes between customers or non-customers that resulted in a shooting anywhere in the country,” that irrelevant to Plaintiff’s case. The court concluded that “the information [Plaintiff] seeks … ‘is tantamount to a fishing expedition.’”
Plaintiff contended that Family Dollar was not entitled to mandamus relief under the unclean hands doctrine and that it waived its right to overbreadth objections. The court pointed out that the only instance in which Family Dollar would waive its objection is that of an untimely written objection to production, which was not the case here. Plaintiff further argued that Family Dollar failed to file a written response to the specific motion that led to the challenged order but did not cite any authority supporting that argument. The court found no basis for invoking the unclean hands doctrine, in which the party “must show that he himself suffered an injury arising from the opposing party’s conduct.” Family Dollar had the right to continue challenging production of documents and nothing Family Dollar did caused Plaintiff serious harm. The court thus ordered the trial court to vacate its order granting Plaintiff’s motion to compel.
TCJL Legal Intern Haden Knobloch researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
