§ 52.007.Alternative Security in Certain Cases

A relief provision for the smaller debtor, and it protects the business rather than the balance sheet.

This section applies only to a judgment debtor with a net worth of less than $10 million.

The threshold identifies who the provision is for. A large enterprise can raise security without dismantling itself; a smaller one may have its entire value tied up in the property it operates with.

The trigger is specific: a showing that posting the ordinary amount would require the judgment debtor to substantially liquidate interests in real or personal property necessary to the normal course of the debtor’s business.

Every element of that phrase narrows it. The liquidation must be substantial, the property must be necessary, and necessary to the normal course of the business — not merely useful or valuable.

On that showing the court shall allow alternative security with a value sufficient to secure the judgment.

"Sufficient to secure the judgment" is the counterweight. The debtor does not post less value; the debtor posts different value, in a form that leaves the business running.

Subsection (c) states the consequence plainly: during the appeal the debtor shall continue to manage, use, and receive earnings from interests in real or personal property in the normal course of business.

That is the point of the section. A business that must sell its equipment or premises to appeal has lost the appeal in substance whatever the appellate court decides.

Subsection (d) supplies a redetermination right. Where an appellate court reduces the amount of the judgment used to set security, the debtor is entitled, pending appeal to a court of last resort, to a redetermination of the security.

The security should follow the judgment down, and without this a debtor would keep securing an amount no longer owed.