Your client was hurt, and the person or company responsible is also facing criminal charges arising out of the same conduct. Maybe it's a drunk driver who plowed into your client's car. Maybe it's a corporate defendant that let a preventable tragedy happen on its property while someone else stands criminally charged for pulling the trigger. Whatever the fact pattern, you file suit, you serve discovery, and then the defense letter arrives with a familiar demand: stay everything in the civil case until the criminal matter is resolved.
Defense counsel will tell you this is standard practice. It isn't. And if you don't push back, your client's case can sit dormant for months, sometimes years, while the criminal system — which exists to punish the wrongdoer, not to compensate your client — takes its own sweet time.
Texas Law Does Not Support an Automatic Stay of Discovery
A motion to stay is attractive to a busy trial judge and a dodgy defendant. It's one motion, one hearing, and the docket problem goes away — at least for a while. The defense frames it as protecting a criminal defendant's Fifth Amendment rights, or points to a pending investigation it has nothing to do with. What the motion rarely mentions is the cost to your client: a plaintiff who has already suffered a catastrophic loss now has to wait indefinitely for a criminal process over which she has no control and in which she has no voice.
Texas courts have said that a blanket, indefinite stay of a civil case pending a related criminal matter is an abuse of discretion. In In re Gore, the San Antonio Court of Appeals held that a trial court abuses its discretion when it “arbitrarily abates a civil case for an indefinite period of time.” 251 S.W.3d 696, 699 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2007, orig. proceeding). The court could not have been more direct: “The pendency of a criminal investigation, indictment, or other proceeding does not affect a contemporaneous civil proceeding based on the same facts or parties” and does not, by itself, justify staying discovery until the criminal matter is resolved. Id. at 699.
This is not a one-court view. The San Antonio court has repeated it since Gebhardt v. Gallardo, 891 S.W.2d 327, 330–32 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 1995, orig. proceeding), and other courts of appeals have lined up behind it. The Waco court reached the same result in Underwood v. Bridewell, 931 S.W.2d 645, 647–48 (Tex. App.—Waco 1996, orig. proceeding), holding it was an abuse of discretion to abate a civil forfeiture action until a criminal prosecution was completed. The San Antonio court applied the same rule again in In re Messervey Trust, No. 04–00–00700–CV, 2001 WL 55642, at *4 (Tex. App.—San Antonio Jan. 24, 2001, orig. proceeding) (not designated for publication), calling it an abuse of discretion to abate a civil case for even six months solely because a related criminal case was pending.
More recently, the Amarillo court put it about as plainly as a court can in In re Becker, 554 S.W.3d 780, 784 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 2018, orig. proceeding): “a civil defendant has no right to indefinitely postpone the adjudication of a civil suit because his conduct may have also implicated a criminal statute.” And in In re Lytle, the Tyler court held that a trial court's decision to stay proceedings amounted to “a blanket denial of all discovery, which is also an abuse of discretion.” 2015 WL 8959428, at *2–3 (Tex. App.—Tyler Dec. 16, 2015, orig. proceeding).
None of this means a criminal defendant gets nothing. Courts have said that the proper remedy is a narrow, individually tailored protective order aimed at specific discovery that is otherwise privileged. In re Gore, 251 S.W.3d 696, 700–01 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2007, orig. proceeding) (“the proper remedy is an individually tailored protective order”).
And plaintiffs have an affirmative right on the other side of the ledger: the right to develop their case and get it to trial. In re Shulman, 544 S.W.3d 861, 869 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2017, orig. proceeding); In re Gore, 251 S.W.3d at 699–700.
Why the Federal Balancing Test Doesn't Rescue the Defense in Texas Civil Matters
Because Texas law is so consistently against them, defendants asking for a stay will often pivot to federal case law instead. Senior federal judge Milton Pollack laid out the federal approach for a 1989 Transferee Judges' Conference, and it is still cited today: courts weigh (1) the commonality of transactions or issues between the civil and criminal cases, (2) the timing and stage of the criminal proceeding, (3) judicial efficiency, and (4) the public interest. Milton Pollack, Parallel Civil and Criminal Proceedings, 129 F.R.D. 201, 203 (1990).
That framework has its place in federal court. But when a defendant in a Texas state court case reaches for a stack of out-of-state federal decisions instead of engaging with Gore, Gebhardt, Underwood, Becker, and Lytle, say so, plainly, in your response. Texas courts are not obligated to import a multi-factor federal balancing test when Texas's own appellate courts have already answered the question. If a defendant cannot point to a Texas court that has adopted the federal factors to justify a stay under facts like yours, that omission is worth pointing out to the judge in as many words.
Arguments to Raise in Your Response to a Motion to Stay Discovery
When you're on the receiving end of one of these motions, here is where I start:
● Lead with the controlling Texas authority. Gore, 251 S.W.3d at 699–701; Becker, 554 S.W.3d at 784; Lytle, 2015 WL 8959428, at *2–3. Make the court see there is no need to weigh a federal balancing test when Texas courts of appeals have already decided this exact issue.
● Demand specificity. Make the defense identify exactly which discovery requests, depositions, or topics actually implicate the criminal case. A blanket stay covering the entire case, or all discovery of any kind, cannot survive that scrutiny. Gore, 251 S.W.3d at 700–01.
● Push for a tailored protective order instead. Offer the alternative yourself. Courts have said this is the preferred remedy, and judges tend to like being handed a workable solution rather than an all-or-nothing fight. In re Unauthorized Practice of Law Comm., 2008 WL 6654756, at *1.
● Point to the case's actual posture. No indictment yet? Case already resolved? Appeals expected to take years, as in a capital case? Each of those realities cuts against an indefinite stay and should be spelled out for the court, with support in the record if you have it.
● Remind the court of Texas's own time standards. The Texas Rules of Judicial Administration direct district and county courts to bring civil jury cases to trial within 18 months of the appearance date, and civil nonjury cases within 12 months. Tex. R. Jud. Admin. 6(b). An indefinite stay is squarely at odds with that benchmark.
● Don't forget the open courts argument. Indefinitely abating a case has been found to violate the open courts provision of the Texas Constitution, article I, section 13. Gebhardt, 891 S.W.2d at 330; Trapnell v. Hunter, 785 S.W.2d 426, 429 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi 1990, orig. proceeding).
● Check whether the defendant has been diligent. If a defendant claims it needs materials from the criminal file and has done little to actually pursue them — no ruling sought on a motion to quash, no conferral, no narrowly tailored request — that lack of diligence undercuts the claim that a stay, rather than its own effort, is what's needed.
In Texas Personal Injury Matters, Your Client Deserves Their Day in Court
A criminal case and a civil case can move on parallel tracks. They usually do, without incident. When a defendant asks a court to freeze your client's civil case indefinitely, the law does not require the judge to say yes — and Texas's own courts of appeals give you the tools to say why. Whether you're handling a car wreck caused by an intoxicated driver or a wrongful death case where criminal charges are also pending, don't let a motion to stay quietly become a life sentence for your client's day in court. If you or someone you know is caught in that kind of standoff, talk to an experienced personal injury lawyer who has handled the fight before — it's a fight worth having.
Read Original Article Here: https://www.ammonslaw.com/blog/2026/july/fighting-motion-to-stay-civil-discovery-texas/
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