The Texas Business Court finished its second year of operation on September 1, 2026. For most North Texas business owners it has been an abstraction, a thing that exists somewhere in Austin and applies to somebody larger. That is no longer a safe assumption. The Legislature lowered the entry threshold in 2025, the court’s docket has grown, and a run of 2026 opinions has started to answer the question that matters to a company on the receiving end of a lawsuit: can this case be moved, and how long do you have to decide?
Here is what the court is, which division would hear a case out of Collin or Denton County, what the dollar test actually measures, and the deadline that decides whether the option is still open.
What the Business Court is
The Business Court was created by House Bill 19 in the 2023 legislative session and is governed by Chapter 25A of the Texas Government Code. It opened for business on September 1, 2024. It is a statewide trial court with specialized judges, concurrent jurisdiction with the district courts over a defined set of commercial disputes, and a practice of issuing written opinions on contested questions, which ordinary Texas district courts rarely do.
That last feature is the one to notice. Two years in, there is a growing published record of how these judges read contracts and jurisdictional statutes. For a business weighing whether to fight or settle, a court that explains itself in writing is a different risk calculation than one that does not.
Which division would hear your case
The statute divides the state into eleven geographic divisions. According to the Office of Court Administration, five of them are currently operational: the First in Dallas, the Third in Austin, the Fourth in San Antonio, the Eighth in Fort Worth, and the Eleventh in Houston. The remaining six have no sitting judges.
For North Texas that split matters more than it sounds.
The First Business Court Division, sitting in Dallas, serves Collin, Dallas, Ellis, Fannin, Grayson, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties. The Eighth Business Court Division, sitting in Fort Worth, serves Denton, Tarrant, Cooke, Wise, Parker, Johnson, and a group of counties running west and north.
So a Frisco company is not in one division. It is in two, depending on where the suit lands. A dispute filed in Collin County goes to the First Division in Dallas. The same dispute filed in Denton County goes to the Eighth Division in Fort Worth, in front of different judges. If your contracts contain a venue clause, that clause is now choosing a business court division as well as a courthouse.
The dollar test, and what changed in 2025
Section 25A.004 of the Government Code sets the jurisdictional test, and House Bill 40 rewrote significant parts of it during the 2025 session.
Under subsection (b), the court has concurrent jurisdiction over internal governance disputes when the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million. That category covers derivative proceedings, actions regarding the governance or internal affairs of an organization, claims about the duties owed by owners, officers, directors and managers, and actions arising out of the Business Organizations Code. The $5 million calculation excludes interest, statutory damages, exemplary damages, penalties, attorney’s fees, and court costs.
Under subsection (c), that dollar threshold disappears entirely when a party to the action is a publicly traded company.
Under subsection (d), the court has concurrent jurisdiction over commercial matters exceeding $5 million, including actions arising out of a qualified transaction, actions on a contract in which the parties agreed to business court jurisdiction, disputes over intellectual property including computer software, trade secret claims, and certain violations of the Finance Code and the Business and Commerce Code.
Three of those changes came from House Bill 40 and are worth stating plainly. The threshold for the commercial category dropped from $10 million to $5 million. Intellectual property and trade secrets were added as qualifying subject matter, which pulls a large category of employee mobility and competitor disputes into range. And the bill removed the requirement that every party and the judge consent before a related claim could proceed under the court’s supplemental jurisdiction.
The practical effect is that a mid sized North Texas company with a serious trade secret problem or a failed acquisition can now be in business court territory on facts that would not have qualified two years ago.
What the court will not hear
The same statute carves out several categories. The Business Court does not have jurisdiction over claims brought by governmental entities, foreclosure actions on individual property, estate and family law matters, or consumer transaction disputes. A company that assumes any large commercial fight qualifies will occasionally be wrong, and the fee for finding out is not trivial.
How a case actually gets there
There are three routes, and the Office of Court Administration’s filing guidance sets them out.
A case can be filed in the Business Court originally, through eFileTexas, with the pleading stating the facts that establish jurisdiction and venue. A case already pending in district or county court can be removed by a party filing a notice of removal in both the originating court and the Business Court. Or the district court can send it there on its own request.
The fees are real money. An original filing runs $2,500 plus an additional $137. A removal runs $2,500. Other motions run $50. Those numbers belong in the early case assessment, not in a surprise later.
The thirty day clock
This is the part that quietly decides most of these questions, because a removal right that expires is the same as no removal right at all.
If every party agrees, removal can be filed at any point during the action. If they do not agree, the notice of removal must be filed within 30 days after the party discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, facts establishing the Business Court’s jurisdiction, or within 30 days after a pending application for a temporary injunction is resolved. A party who wants the case sent back has 30 days after the notice of removal to move for remand, or 30 days after entering an appearance if it was served after removal.
Three 2026 opinions have put edges on that framework.
In Aspire Commercial v. Stephenson, 2026 Tex. Bus. 23, the court read the temporary injunction provision in Section 25A.006(f)(2) as a ceiling rather than a floor. The defendant argued removal could not happen until the injunction application was decided. The court disagreed and allowed removal based on newly discovered facts establishing the $5 million threshold.
In DrinkPAK v. PRIII/Crow Building C, 2026 Tex. Bus. 27, the court held that a defendant has to assess jurisdiction from its own service date rather than waiting for a counterclaim. Because the original petition already stated an objective amount in controversy, the removal filed more than 30 days after that figure became reasonably apparent was untimely.
Read together, those two decisions point the same direction. The clock starts when the facts become knowable, not when the defendant gets comfortable. A company served with a large commercial petition should be asking the business court question in the first week, not after the first mediation.
A third case addresses the size of the number itself. In Pradera SFR v. American Housing Ventures, 2026 Tex. Bus. 25, the court found the pleaded damages sufficient to exceed the threshold and declined to enforce a contractual limitation of damages at the jurisdictional stage, treating that limitation as a merits question rather than a pleading defect. A damages cap in the contract, in other words, did not automatically shrink the case below the line.
Two other 2026 rulings worth knowing
In South Shore ER v. Bashiri, 2026 Tex. Bus. 39, the court drew a distinction that contract drafters should sit up for. Forum selection clauses are presumptively enforceable. Venue selection clauses are not, and require statutory authorization, which in Texas generally means the agreement has to involve a major transaction as the venue statute defines it. The court found no qualifying major transaction there. If your form agreements contain a venue clause that nobody has looked at since it was copied from an older deal, that is a cheap thing to review.
In Daimler Truck Financial Services v. Vanguard National Trailer Corp., 2026 Tex. Bus. 16, the court dismissed Indiana manufacturers for lack of specific personal jurisdiction, finding the operative facts too attenuated from the Texas contacts. Being in business court does not relax the ordinary rules about who can be hauled into a Texas courtroom.
What has actually been on the docket
Judge reporting collected by The Texas Lawbook at the court’s two year mark describes a docket of high dollar commercial contract disputes, energy agreements, real estate transactions, financing arrangements, promissory notes, purchase agreements, and indemnification fights, along with trade secret and employee mobility cases and corporate governance disputes involving closely held companies, partnerships, family businesses, and nonprofits. The same reporting notes a significant jump in filings between the court’s first and second years.
The closely held company detail is the one North Texas owners should register. This is not exclusively a court for public company securities litigation. A good deal of what it handles looks like a fight between three people who used to be partners.
The court has also shown it can move. In the dispute between the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars, the court substituted an accelerated merits trial for a temporary injunction proceeding and set trial roughly three months after the case was filed. Speed cuts both directions, and a defendant who expected eighteen months of discovery should plan differently.
Where appeals go
Appeals from the Business Court go to the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, a statewide appellate court with exclusive jurisdiction over them, under Sections 25A.008 and 25A.009. That is a different appellate bench than the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas or the Second Court in Fort Worth, with a different body of precedent forming. It is one more reason the choice of forum is a strategic decision rather than a clerical one.
What to do before a dispute starts
Three things, and none of them require a lawsuit to be pending.
First, look at the dispute resolution section of your standard commercial agreements. Section 25A.004(d) lets parties agree by contract to business court jurisdiction for qualifying matters. That is a choice you can make deliberately at signing, when nobody is angry, rather than fighting about it later. Whether you want it depends on the kind of counterparty you deal with and the kind of dispute you expect, and it is a real decision rather than a default.
Second, look at the venue clause in the same agreements, in light of the South Shore ER distinction between forum selection and venue selection.
Third, put the 30 day question into your intake routine. When a petition arrives, somebody should answer three questions in writing that week: what is the amount in controversy on the face of the pleading, does the subject matter fall inside Section 25A.004, and what date did we learn it. Those three lines preserve an option that expires quietly.
What is still unsettled
Several things, and it is worth being honest about them.
Six of the eleven divisions still have no judges, and whether and when they are staffed is a funding and appointment question rather than a settled one. The reach of the court’s supplemental jurisdiction after House Bill 40 is still being worked out case by case. Courts are also still developing the standards for how the amount in controversy is measured at the pleading stage, which is exactly the issue Pradera and DrinkPAK approached from different angles. A confident prediction about how a specific case will be treated is not available yet, and anyone offering one is guessing.
What is settled is the arithmetic of the deadline. Thirty days is thirty days.
If you want help deciding whether a pending or threatened dispute belongs in the Texas Business Court, or reviewing the forum and venue language in your commercial agreements before the next one is signed, the litigation attorneys at Hanshaw Kennedy Hafen work with companies across Frisco, Plano, McKinney, and the surrounding North Texas communities. Visit our Litigation page to learn more.
Related reading
- How Business Litigation Works in Texas: A Plain-Language Overview
- What to Do When Another Business Sues You in Texas
About the author: Hastings L. Hanshaw is a founding partner of Hanshaw Kennedy Hafen in Frisco, Texas. He is a business litigation and trial lawyer who has tried cases in state and federal courts across Texas.