The Texas Supreme Court has ordered a trial court to vacate parts of an order granting a motion to compel a defendant’s response to interrogatories that would incriminate him in a separate criminal prosecution.
In re Taylor Brock Peters (No. 23-0611; October 4, 2024) arose from a rear-end collision on the IH 35 access road in Austin. Plaintiffs sued Peters for injuries sustained in the accident, which required the hospitalization of all parties. When a police officer visited Peters in his hospital room, Peters acknowledged that he had been to two bars prior to the accident and that he “remembered being ‘buzzed’ and then trying to drive home.” The police officer administered a breath test, which showed that Peters had a blood alcohol level of 0.196. The officer arrested Peters, and he was charged with two counts of intoxication assault with a motor vehicle. In the civil action for negligence and gross negligence, Plaintiffs sought discovery of the names of the bars that had served Peters alcohol on the evening of the accident for purposes of filing a dram shop action. Peters refused to answer, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. The trial court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel, and the Austin Court of Appeals denied mandamus relief. Peters filed a petition for writ of mandamus with SCOTX.
In a per curiam opinion without oral argument, SCOTX granted the petition. The Court acknowledged that the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination is not absolute and that a trial court “must be satisfied that the witness’s refusal to answer is ‘based upon [his] good faith . . . and is justifiable under all of the circumstances” (citation omitted). Before compelling a witness to answer, moreover, “it must be ‘perfectly clear, from a careful consideration of all the circumstances in the case, that the witness is mistaken, and that the answer(s) cannot possibly have such tendency’ to incriminate” (citation omitted).
Plaintiffs argued that Peters should be compelled to answer because their dram shop action depends upon it. The Court rejected this argument on the principle that “a valid assertion of the privilege prevails over the civil justice system’s needs” (citations omitted). Here, the Court noted, Peters has in fact been charged with a crime and that answering Plaintiffs’ discovery would be used against him in the criminal case. Plaintiffs argued further that Peters waived the privilege by admitting to the police officer that he had visited bars, drank three beers, and felt buzzed before driving. The Court likewise rejected this argument, holding that there was no evidence that Peters voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived the privilege when interrogated in the hospital. To the contrary, “Peters was ‘[c]onfused’ and ‘disoriented’” and “confined to [a] hospital bed, with a ‘cut on his forehead that was causing swelling around his face.” Under these circumstances, Peters “faces a reasonable danger of incrimination from disclosing his whereabouts before the collision.” Specifically, disclosing that information “could further incriminate him by leading to evidence that Peters drank more than the three beers he claimed.”
