§ 33.004.Designation of Responsible Third Party

The most consequential section in the chapter, and the one that most changes how a Texas defendant tries a case.

A defendant may designate a person as a responsible third party by filing a motion for leave, on or before the 60th day before the trial date, unless the court finds good cause for a later filing. The designated person is then assigned a percentage on the verdict form even though the claimant never sued them.

Leave is close to automatic. The court shall grant leave unless another party objects on or before the 15th day after the motion is served. Even then, the court still grants leave unless the objecting party establishes both that the defendant failed to plead sufficient facts about the person's alleged responsibility and that, after being granted leave to replead, the defendant failed again. Two failures, not one.

Subsection (l) is the counterweight. After adequate time for discovery, a party may move to strike the designation on the ground that there is no evidence the designated person is responsible for any portion of the injury. The court shall grant the motion unless the defendant produces sufficient evidence to raise a genuine issue of fact. So the designation is easy to make and must later be supported — the burden shifts once discovery has run.

Subsection (d) is a trap for a defendant who sits on information. A person may not be designated after limitations has expired as to them if the defendant failed to comply with its obligations to timely disclose that the person may be designated. A defendant who conceals a candidate until the claimant can no longer sue them loses the designation.

Subsections (j) and (k) handle the unknown criminal. If, not later than 60 days after filing its original answer, a defendant alleges that an unknown person committed a criminal act that caused the loss, the court shall grant leave to designate that person — on a showing of a reasonable probability the act was criminal, all identifying characteristics known, and sufficient pleading. The person is denominated "Jane Doe" or "John Doe" until identified. That provision is central to premises liability cases arising from crime on the defendant's property.

Subsection (i) protects the designated person. Neither the filing or granting of the motion nor a finding of fault against them imposes liability, and it may not be used in any other proceeding — by res judicata, collateral estoppel, or any other theory — to impose liability on them. They are named on a verdict form in a case they are not party to, and the finding follows them nowhere.