The Texas Supreme Court has reversed the Dallas Court of Appeals and granted mandamus ordering a trial court to dismiss a wrongful-death case against Greyhound arising from an accident that occurred in central Mexico.
In re Greyhound Lines, Inc. (No. 23-1035; May 23, 2025) stemmed from an accident involving a bus owned by Estrella Blanca, a company based in Mexico city, which occurred near San Luis Potosi. Plaintiff sued the driver, who had fled, Estrella Blanca, and Greyhound. Greyhound and Estrella had an agreement in which each company sold tickets for each other for their respective areas, with each earning a commission on tickets sold. Estrella Blanca was responsible for its respective business structure and routes within Mexico. Greyhound’s participation in the transaction ended once the ticket was sold and the customer disembarks and boards at Estrella’s bus terminal.
Greyhound’s motion to dismiss the case based on the doctrine of forum non conveniens was denied by the trial court. Greyhound sought mandamus from the Dallas Court of Appeals, which the court denied. Greyhound then filed a petition for writ of mandamus at SCOTX, which granted an emergency stay pending consideration of the petition.
In a per curiam opinion, SCOTX conditionally granted the writ and ordered the trial court to dismiss the case. Setting out the statutory codification of the forum non conveniens doctrine in personal-injury and wrongful-death suits, § 71.051, CPRC, the Court first observed that the task for determining foreign law is a question of law that belongs to the appellate courts under TRE 203, not a fact issue that the trial court decides through reliance on the parties’ experts and other materials. Turning to the first statutory factor, the availability of an alternate forum, Greyhound stipulated to Mexican courts’ jurisdiction and to waive limitations defenses. It pointed further to Greyhound’s “unrefuted materials suggesting joint-and-several liability is available in Mexico, and that, as a result, relief can be granted in the bus driver’s absence.” Responding to Plaintiffs’ assertion that Mexico was unavailable because Plaintiffs wouldn’t consent to suit there, the Court stated that, although deference is afforded to Plaintiffs’ choice of a forum, “the plaintiff’s choice must sometimes yield in the public interest, and in the interest of fundamental fairness” (citation omitted).
Second, answering the question of whether a Mexican court provides an adequate remedy, the Court concluded that it did. Although some monetary damages are not available in Mexico (e.g., punitive and “survival-type” damages and prejudgment interest), the Court has previously ruled that remedies exist and that “courts should avoid” comparing American courts to foreign ones unless “the alternate forum ‘would in substance provide no remedy at all’” (citation omitted). As to the third factor, whether maintaining the claim in Texas would work a substantial injustice to Greyhound, the Court noted that although Greyhound is headquartered in Texas, everything else about the case, including Estrella’s officers and directors, the bus passengers, investigating authorities, the bus driver, and the medical examiner, was located in Mexico and beyond the reach of Texas’s compulsory process. At the same time, Plaintiffs presented no evidence that any of the witnesses couldn’t be compelled to testify in a Mexican court. This factor favored a Mexican forum.
The fourth factor was resolved by Greyhound’s stipulation to the jurisdiction of a Mexican court, resolving the question of whether an alternate forum could exercise jurisdiction over all the parties. Regarding the fifth factor, the Court concluded that the “balance of the private interests of the parties and the public interest of the state in favor of the claim or action being brought in an alternate forum” favored Mexico. On the private interest side, the Court looked to the “ease of access to proof, the availability and cost of compulsory process, … and other practical concerns” touching on the efficiency and expense of trial. Here the private interests favored Mexico because most of the relevant evidence is in Mexico. Public interests also favored dismissal because Mexican law applies to Plaintiffs’ claims (including their negligence per se claim, which relies entirely on Mexican law) and the choice-of-law analysis favors the application of Mexican law (where the injury occurred provides the default). Finally, the Court saw no evidence that a “stay or dismissal would … result in unreasonable duplication or proliferation of litigation” (the sixth factor). Although the case had been going for years in Texas and much of the discovery and pretrial matters had occurred, Greyhound’s motion was still timely, and the Court “decline[d] to punish Greyhound because the trial court erroneously denied the motion and litigation has progressed since.”
The Court was not persuaded by Plaintiffs’ argument that Greyhound admitted proper forum in Texas and waived its forum non conveniens challenge by filing a cross-claim against Estrella. The cross-claim, however, involved co-defendants, not Plaintiffs and Greyhound. In any event, filing a cross-claim doesn’t waive anything, and the fact that Greyhound defended itself in Texas and incurred litigation expenses here did not amount to a substantial invocation of the judicial process. Additionally, Plaintiffs did not argue that they were prejudiced by Greyhound’s cross-claim.
This decision doesn’t blaze any new trail, but it emphasizes once more that § 71.051, under the right circumstances, remains a valuable tool in the defense lawyer’s toolbox.
TCJL Research Intern Satchel Williams assisted with the research and writing of this article.
