§ 15.012.Injunction Against Suit

One sentence, and the logic is self-evident: an action to stay proceedings in a suit shall be brought in the county in which the suit is pending.

Without the rule, a party unhappy with a case could seek an injunction against it in a friendlier county, producing two courts issuing conflicting orders about the same litigation.

The provision keeps control of a case with the court hearing it. A party who wants proceedings stopped applies to that court, or to an appellate court above it, rather than to a different trial court elsewhere in the state.

It sits in Subchapter B, so the venue is mandatory. It cannot be waived by agreement, and the joinder provisions cannot move it — indeed under the multiple-claims rule a suit that includes such an action is pulled to the county where the underlying case is pending.

Note what the section does not do. It fixes venue, not power. Whether one Texas court may enjoin proceedings in another is a separate question, generally answered by the doctrine of dominant jurisdiction: the court where suit was first properly filed has it, and the usual remedy in the second court is a plea in abatement rather than an injunction.

So a party facing duplicative litigation ordinarily abates the later case in the court hearing it. This section matters when a genuine action to stay is brought — and it sends that action to the one county that cannot produce a conflict.