§ 15.0641.Venue Rights of Multiple Defendants

A protection for co-defendants who do not control each other's litigation choices.

Where two or more defendants are joined, any action or omission by one defendant in relation to venue, including a waiver of venue, does not impair or diminish the right of any other defendant to challenge venue properly.

Without the rule, a defendant who answered without objecting — or who agreed to the county for its own reasons — would fix venue for everyone. A co-defendant sued in a county with no connection to it would be bound by a choice it had no part in.

Note that the section covers an omission as well as an act. The common way to lose a venue objection is not to make one, and a co-defendant that answers late or says nothing cannot cost the others their objection.

Read this alongside the multiple-defendants provision, which says venue proper as to one defendant covers all defendants on same-transaction claims. The two operate at different stages: that section addresses whether venue is proper; this one addresses who may contest it.

They fit together without conflict. A defendant may challenge venue under this section and still lose, because the other section makes venue proper as to it once the plaintiff establishes venue against any one defendant.

The practical instruction is short: each defendant must preserve its own objection, on time, with or before its own answer. The section protects a defendant from its co-defendants; it does not excuse a defendant from acting for itself.