§ 17.068.Continuance or Postponement

The discretionary safety valve of the nonresident motorist subchapter.

A court may continue or postpone an action in which process is served under this subchapter as necessary to afford the defendant reasonable opportunity to defend.

The section exists because the subchapter measures its deadlines from an event the defendant knows nothing about. Service on the chairman starts the clock; the defendant learns of the case only when the mailed notice arrives, which may be days later or, at an old address, not at all.

Without a corrective, the equivalence to personal service would be doing real unfairness in the cases where the post was slow.

"May" makes it discretionary and "as necessary" sets the measure. This is not an entitlement to more time, and a defendant who received the notice promptly and did nothing has no claim on it.

The standard is a reasonable opportunity to defend, which is the language of due process rather than of scheduling convenience. That framing matters: the provision is the constitutional backstop for a service method the defendant had no part in.

The court may act on its own. Nothing requires a motion, and a court that can see from the file that notice went to a stale address is in a position to postpone without being asked — which is worth something to a defendant who is not there to ask.

Read it with the default judgment provision, which supplies the fixed minimum, and with the failed-service provision, which deals with notice that could not be delivered at all.