§ 15.065.Watercourse or Roadway Forming County Boundary

A boundary rule that resolves an otherwise impossible question.

Where a river, watercourse, highway, road, or street forms the boundary line between two counties, the courts of each county have concurrent jurisdiction over the parts of the watercourse or roadway forming the boundary, in the same manner as if it were in that county.

Without it, a collision on a boundary road or an incident in midstream would require deciding which side of an invisible line it happened on — a question often unanswerable and always disputable.

Concurrent jurisdiction means either county's courts may hear the matter, so a plaintiff may choose and neither county can insist the events occurred on the other side.

Note the closing words. The boundary strip is treated as if it lay within each county, so every venue provision keyed to the county where events occurred operates normally for both. The section does not create a special venue; it makes the ordinary ones work.

The scope is narrow and worth reading carefully. It reaches the parts of the watercourse or roadway that form the boundary — not the whole length of a road that touches the line somewhere, and not land adjoining the river.

The provision matters more than its obscurity suggests in a state with as many boundary rivers and shared roadways as Texas. It also removes a fight that would otherwise be litigated by surveyors: rivers move, and a county line fixed to a watercourse is not fixed at all.