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

What happens when a demand is not met, and the answer is a petition rather than a penalty.

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

Venue lies where the person resides, is found, or transacts business, or in a district court of Travis County.

One restriction narrows the choice. Where the person transacts business in more than one county and the office elects not to file in Travis County, the petition must go to the county of the person’s principal office or place of business in this state, or as agreed.

The restriction is doing more work in this chapter than in the older one. An office that may sue is a county office, and without this a business operating across Texas could be pursued in whichever of thirty counties the investigating prosecutor preferred.

As drafted, the realistic choices are two: Travis County, or the defendant’s own headquarters.

Note that this section imposes nothing on the recipient. It produces a court order requiring compliance, and no fine attaches to having failed to comply before it.

The teeth are elsewhere, and they are sequential. Disobeying the order that follows is contempt; destroying or falsifying material to defeat the demand is a Class A misdemeanor in its own right, whether or not any order was ever made.