The Texas Supreme Court might need a separate docket for the proliferation of mandamus petitions in UIM cases. The Court now has before it six such cases in which a trial court refused to abate the insured’s extracontractual claims until the insurer’s liability on the policy was established or compelled the insurer’s compliance with broad discovery requests, including for corporate representative depositions, on matters that go well beyond a determination of the coverage question. In each case so far, the Court has granted emergency relief.
In this case, In re State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (No. 24-0311; stay issued April 19, 2024), the trial court properly abated the insured’s extracontractual claims until after the other driver’s liability, the extent of Plaintiff’s injury, and whether the other driver was uninsured are determined. Plaintiff moved to depose State’s Farm’s corporate representative. State Farm responded that it had provided all relevant non-privileged information to Plaintiff already, totaling 807 pages of information regarding the crash. Plaintiff moved to compel the deposition, which the trial court granted in its entirety. The Fort Worth Court of appeals denied State Farm’s petition for a writ of mandamus. State Farm sought relief from SCOTX, which issued an emergency stay.
State Farm contends that Plaintiff’s request for a corporate representative’s deposition violates Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 192.4’s proportionality requirement. Here, in addition to disclosing all relevant non-privileged information, State Farm admitted that Plaintiff had a valid policy and was the named insured at the time of the accident, that his vehicle was a scheduled vehicle, and that the policy had UIM benefits up to a certain amount if Plaintiff proved entitlement to those benefits. When combined with State Farm’s lack of personal knowledge of the relevant facts of the accident, the deposition would be highly unlikely to induce any new information to offset the cost and burden of producing the representative. Plaintiff has further failed to show what information she is actually seeking from the representative or whether she can “glean” the information from other sources.
We’ve said it before, but something is not working in UIM litigation despite SCOTX’s best efforts to bring some order and efficiency to the process.
