§ 63.005.Place for Trial

A venue rule for the contested case, and it favours the garnishee.

Where a garnishee other than a foreign corporation is not a resident of the county in which the original suit is pending or was tried and a party files an affidavit controverting the garnishee’s answer, the issues shall be tried in the county in which the garnishee resides.

The garnishee is a stranger to the dispute, and the rule reflects that. A person or business that happens to owe the defendant money should not be dragged across the state to defend an answer they were compelled to file.

The trigger is a controverting affidavit. An uncontested answer resolves the garnishment where the writ issued; only a challenge moves the trial.

The transfer is conditional on the plaintiff assembling a file. The issues may be tried in a court of that county with jurisdiction of the amount if the plaintiff files a certified copy of the judgment in the original suit and a certified copy of the garnishment proceedings — the application, the answer, and the controverting affidavit.

Requiring certified copies gives the new court the whole record, since it has no file of its own and did not issue the writ.

The burden of producing them falls on the plaintiff, which is right — the plaintiff chose to controvert the answer.

Subsection (b) removes foreign corporations from the rule: where a garnishee whose answer is controverted is a foreign corporation, the issues are tried in the court in which the original suit is pending or was tried.

The reason is that residence is an awkward concept for such a garnishee. A foreign corporation has no county of residence in the ordinary sense, so the rule would have no clear application.