Mara Lindsey alleges that Carlos Pantoja negligently rear-ended her vehicle while she was stopped at a red light, and she seeks, among other damages, $56,751.55 in past medical expenses and an estimated $263,691.15 in future medical expenses.¹ She accepted a settlement offer from Pantoja's insurer for his $50,000 policy limit and then submitted a claim to her own insurer, State Farm, under her underinsured motorist (UIM) policy, which has a $100,000 limit; State Farm offered $689.58 to settle the claim.² Lindsey sued State Farm under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act (UDJA) for declarations on Pantoja's liability, her covered damages, the applicability of her policy, and her entitlement to benefits, and she sued State Farm and its claims adjuster for Insurance Code violations, alleging that they failed to attempt a good-faith settlement of her UIM claim, among other statutory violations.³

State Farm moved to segregate the extracontractual Insurance Code claims, through separate trials or severance, and to abate them until the UDJA claims were resolved; Lindsey agreed the claims should be tried separately but argued that In re State Farm (2021) requires a "bifurcated trial" conducted in two phases before the same jury.¹ Lindsey also noticed a deposition of a State Farm corporate representative; State Farm produced 1,188 pages of documents, including all nonprivileged documents in its claim file, moved to quash the notice under Rule 192.4, and submitted an unsworn declaration from its claim specialist, Todd Dauper, who also stipulated that the policy was in force, that Lindsey is a covered person, that Pantoja is an underinsured motorist, and that the collision was an accident.² The trial court denied the motions to quash, segregate, and abate, stating that "the case will proceed as outlined by the Texas Supreme Court in In re State Farm," and the Dallas Court of Appeals denied State Farm's mandamus petitions without substantive explanation.³ State Farm filed its mandamus petition on September 15, 2023, and Lindsey responded on October 9, 2023; the Court requested briefs on the merits on December 15, 2023, and heard argument on October 3, 2024.⁴ The Court decided the case on April 25, 2025.⁵

Original proceeding on a petition for writ of mandamus, filed after the Dallas Court of Appeals denied relief from the trial court's orders; argued October 3, 2024, and decided April 25, 2025, with a concurring opinion.⁶

State Farm presents three issues: whether the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to abate the statutory claims until after trial on the declaratory-judgment claim; whether it abused its discretion by denying State Farm's motions to quash the depositions of a corporate representative and a claims adjuster under the proportionality requirements of Rule 192.4; and whether it abused its discretion by limiting State Farm's access to Lindsey's medical records.¹ The Court decided whether, in the first part of a bifurcated UIM proceeding, an insured may conduct discovery on her extracontractual claims and depose the insurer's corporate representative; it did not decide the claims-adjuster and medical-records issues, explained below.²

Mandamus relief is an extraordinary remedy that issues only if the trial court clearly abused its discretion and the relator has no adequate remedy by appeal; a trial court has no discretion to determine what the law is, and the adequacy of an appellate remedy turns on balancing the benefits of mandamus review against the detriments.¹

Whether the trial court had to abate the extracontractual claims and quash the corporate-representative deposition while the UDJA claims are pending.

Relators (State Farm and its claims adjuster): Abating Lindsey's extracontractual claims until after trial on her declaratory-judgment claim is necessary to avoid the expense of discovery on issues that may be mooted by the result of the car-crash case, as In re State Farm and the courts of appeals before and after it make clear; and a corporate-representative deposition must satisfy Rule 192.4's proportionality requirements, which this one cannot because State Farm produced all car-crash-related information in its possession and lacks personal knowledge.¹ In reply, State Farm contended that Lindsey's reliance on Liberty National v. Akin is misplaced because the UIM contract is unique, since benefits are conditioned on the insured's legal entitlement to recover from a third party.²

Real Party in Interest (Lindsey): Akin rejected a special rule requiring severance of bad-faith claims and Texas courts sever extracontractual claims only when the plaintiff also pleads breach of contract, which she has not done; In re State Farm and In re USAA call for a single bifurcated trial in which one jury decides the issues in phases; and the trial court correctly denied the motions to quash.³ She also argued that State Farm's position would make UIM disputes so costly and slow that insureds would be discouraged from pursuing them.⁴

State Farm argued that courts of appeals had long required abatement of extracontractual claims in UIM cases and that Lindsey's contrary argument conflicts with this Court's precedent.¹ The Court said that multiple petitions for mandamus raising the same or a similar legal issue were pending and that its opinion would provide guidance and a more uniform, predictable rule for those and future cases.²

• Texas Civil Justice League filed an amicus curiae brief on October 10, 2023.
• American Property Casualty Insurance Association filed an amicus curiae letter on October 23, 2023.
• Texas Association of Defense Counsel filed an amicus curiae letter on October 25, 2023.
• Farmers Texas Mutual County Insurance Company filed an amicus curiae brief on April 11, 2024.

Holding

In the distinctive UIM context, a party may invoke a sever- or bifurcate-and-abate rule and is entitled to its application when the insurer has offered to settle the UIM claim, the insured has not obtained a judgment establishing UIM coverage, and the extracontractual claims seek damages that depend on the right to UIM benefits; and a trial court should grant the insurer's motion to quash a corporate-representative deposition during the coverage phase when the insurer has stipulated to matters within its personal knowledge, produced its nonprivileged documents, and submitted evidence supporting its proportionality complaints and lack of personal knowledge.¹

Reasoning

UIM framework. By statute, UIM coverage pays what the insured is "legally entitled to recover" from an underinsured motorist, and Brainard construed that phrase to mean the insurer has no contractual duty to pay until the insured obtains a judgment establishing the other motorist's liability and underinsured status, which the insured may obtain by suing the insurer directly.² The Court reviewed its 2021 cases: In re State Farm required bifurcation when only extracontractual claims are brought, USAA I explained that a "bifurcated trial" has one jury deciding questions in phases while "bifurcated trials" are separate trials with separate juries, Irwin recognized the UDJA as a vehicle for the predicate judgment, and USAA II addressed quashing a corporate representative's deposition.³

Abatement. The logic of the sever-and-abate rule applies equally when predicate UDJA claims are tried first, because extracontractual claims may be mooted by the car-crash trial and the insurer has a substantial right not to incur discovery and litigation costs on them.⁴ The Court rejected Lindsey's reading of In re State Farm as requiring one jury in two phases, because that opinion contemplated separate trials under Rule 174(b), and a single-jury process would defeat the rationale of saving the insurer the effort of discovery and voir dire on claims that may be moot.⁵ It also rejected the argument that the rule applies only to breach-of-contract claims, because a UDJA claim is the remedy for resolving the contractual dispute and courts have applied the rule to UDJA claims since Irwin.⁶ Akin does not control because it involved a homeowner's policy where the policy alone dictates when benefits are owed, whereas a UIM insured is owed benefits only after obtaining the requisite judgment.⁷ The resulting delay is not unreasonable, and because the initial judgment in a bifurcated proceeding is interlocutory, a successful insured need not wait for appeals before proceeding.⁸ The Court left open whether independent damages or a UIM insurer's duty to settle before judgment could support extracontractual claims, because the question was not presented.⁹

Adequacy of remedy. Denial of a motion to abate is usually an incidental ruling not subject to mandamus, but here no appeal protects the insurer's right not to undergo costly extracontractual discovery that may prove unnecessary, and mandamus is also appropriate to give guidance because similar petitions were pending.¹⁰ The Court declined to revisit Brainard, because Lindsey had not asked in her briefing or at argument that it be overruled and her letter did not address the stare decisis considerations.¹¹

Proportionality. Discovery may not exceed the bounds of the claims at issue, so Lindsey may not discover the abated extracontractual claims under the guise of investigating a claim for benefits, and State Farm's stipulations narrowed the disputed UDJA issues to Pantoja's liability and the existence and amount of Lindsey's damages.¹² Following the roadmap from USAA II, State Farm produced over a thousand pages from its nonprivileged claim file and Dauper verified that the production was the entire unprivileged file, that State Farm had neither witnessed the collision nor treated Lindsey, and that preparing a representative would cost about 18 employee-hours and approximately $4,000 in attorneys' fees.¹³ The Court concluded that much of the information sought would be cumulative of the documents produced and that, given State Farm's lack of personal knowledge, the likely benefit was outweighed by the burden, and that State Farm's evidence also answered Lindsey's complaint about the topic of its damages valuation, which is obtainable from its designated medical experts.¹⁴

Other issues. The claims adjuster is a defendant only on the extracontractual claims, so that deposition, which concerns only those abated claims, falls with the abatement ruling, and Lindsey had withdrawn her objections to the medical-records request after In re Liberty County Mutual; the Court said it was confident that the trial court would give State Farm relief on those matters and that a writ would issue only if it did not.¹⁵

Concurrence (Justice Sullivan, joined by Chief Justice Blacklock, Justice Devine, and Justice Young). He joined the opinion but saved for another day his many questions and concerns about Brainard, which he said is a recurring drain on judicial resources, noted that Brainard was cited only once in the parties' merits briefs and once in a later letter, and said he was prepared to join the parties in assuming that Brainard was correct for purposes of disposing of the case promptly.¹⁶

Disposition

The Court conditionally granted the petition for writ of mandamus and ordered the trial court to vacate its orders denying State Farm's motions to abate the extracontractual claims and to quash the corporate-representative deposition notice and to grant those motions; the writ will issue only if the trial court fails to comply.¹⁷

Vote Breakdown

Majority Opinion by Justice Devine

Joined by Blacklock, C.J., and Bland, Boyd, Busby, Huddle, Lehrmann, Sullivan, and Young, JJ.

Concurrence by Justice Sullivan

Joined by Blacklock, C.J., and Devine and Young, JJ.