§ 140A.060.Failure to Comply with Demand Petition for Enforcement

The enforcement route, and it is a petition rather than a sanction.

If a person fails to comply with a civil investigative demand duly served, the attorney general may file and serve a petition for an order of the court for enforcement.

Venue lies in the district court of the county where the person resides, is found, or transacts business, or in a district court of Travis County — the attorney general’s choice, and the mirror image of the venue given to a recipient challenging a demand.

One qualification narrows it. Where the person transacts business in more than one county and the attorney general elects not to file in Travis County, the petition must be filed in the county of the person’s principal office or place of business in this state, or as agreed.

That prevents forum shopping among a business’s many locations. A company operating in thirty counties would otherwise face suit in whichever the state preferred; the choice is Travis County or the company’s own headquarters.

Note that enforcement is a court order, not a penalty. The petition asks a judge to require compliance, and the section attaches no fine to nonperformance.

Consequences arrive at two other points. Failing to obey the resulting order is punishable as contempt, and destroying or falsifying material to defeat a demand is a separate criminal offense.

So the sequence is demand, order, contempt — with the criminal provision reserved for deliberate interference rather than delay.