§ 27.0075.Effect of Ruling

A quarantine provision, sealing off the motion from everything that comes after.

Neither the court’s ruling on the motion nor the fact that it made such a ruling is admissible in evidence at any later stage of the case, and no burden of proof or degree of proof otherwise applicable is affected by the ruling.

The evidentiary half prevents a serious distortion. A plaintiff who survives a motion to dismiss has satisfied a judge that they have clear and specific evidence of a prima facie case — which, told to a jury, sounds like judicial endorsement of the claim.

The reverse is equally true. A defendant would want the jury to hear that the judge once had to consider whether the case should be thrown out.

Note that it excludes the fact of the ruling as well as its content, which closes the obvious workaround of referring to the motion without saying how it came out.

The burden of proof half addresses a different risk. The chapter imposes an unusual standard at an early stage, and without this sentence a party might argue that having met it once lowers what they must prove at trial, or that a defendant who failed to establish a defence on the motion has lost it.

The section says no: the trial proceeds on the burdens that would otherwise apply, as though the motion had never been made.

The provision is what makes the early motion safe to use. A screening mechanism that shaped the merits of the surviving case would deter parties from invoking it and would prejudice those who did.