§ 15.013.Injunction Against Execution of Judgment

The companion to the stay-of-proceedings rule, applied after judgment.

Actions to restrain execution of a judgment based on invalidity of the judgment or of the writ must be brought in the county where the judgment was rendered.

The rendering court is the one that knows what it decided and whether its own writ issued properly. Allowing a collateral attack elsewhere would let a losing party relitigate a judgment before a court with no knowledge of the case.

Note the limitation to invalidity grounds. The section governs an attack on the validity of the judgment or writ. A dispute over execution that does not challenge validity — a claim that the wrong property was levied on, or that exempt property was seized — is a different action and may be venued elsewhere.

That distinction matters more than it looks. A judgment debtor whose homestead has been levied on is not saying the judgment is invalid; they are saying this property cannot answer for it. Such a claim belongs where the property and the levy are, not necessarily where the judgment was signed.

The rule reaches out-of-county execution. A judgment is routinely abstracted and executed in other counties, and without this section every one of them would be a possible forum for attacking the judgment itself.

The section fixes venue only. Whether the judgment can be attacked at all — by bill of review, by a motion in the original cause, or not at all because the time has run — is governed elsewhere.