The city of Houston has abandoned a controversial legal strategy aimed at tossing out a lawsuit over a police vehicle collision after a state district judge openly questioned the legitimacy of the municipality's defense. The retreat highlights growing scrutiny over how municipal attorneys handle a rising volume of vehicular crash claims brought against on-duty police officers.
The procedural mechanism at the center of the dispute involves Texas Rule 91a motions, which are designed to offer an expedited pathway to dismiss civil lawsuits that are so baseless on their face that no reasonable person could believe their assertions. Under state procedural standards, judges evaluate these filings strictly by assessing the plausibility of the plaintiff’s written allegations, without reviewing evidentiary materials.
The city’s decision to pull back the motion comes during an era of mounting fiscal and legal exposure for Houston, which is grappling with a spike in both the volume of damage claims from motorists hit by police officers and the total monetary payouts required to resolve those disputes.
Legal observers have pointed out that municipal attorneys have routinely turned to Rule 91a filings not merely to discard plainly meritless lawsuits, but to challenge legitimate civil actions. Critics contend that rather than efficiently filtering unviable litigation, the city’s recurring deployment of these motions has effectively stalled proceedings for months while generating preliminary decisions that the municipality can appeal.
The immediate dispute unfolded in the courtroom of State District Judge Kristen Hawkins, who was presiding over a case involving an East Downtown collision between an on-duty Houston police officer and a civilian motorist. In seeking to terminate the lawsuit early, the city asserted governmental immunity, arguing it could not be held liable for damages because the officer was actively responding to an emergency with the patrol vehicle's emergency lights and sirens activated.
However, the city's factual assertions were directly challenged by records from the incident itself. The claim that the cruiser was actively utilizing its emergency equipment while responding to an urgent call appeared to be contradicted by both dashboard camera video of the collision and the formal incident report authored by the officer involved.
During a preliminary hearing, Hawkins cast doubt on the city's approach, questioning whether municipal attorneys had presented a legitimate motion. The judge indicated from the bench that the defensive filing appeared to be an improper use of the legal system, noting that she viewed the motion as a potential waste of judicial resources and taxpayer money.
Hawkins subsequently instructed municipal attorneys to return to court with a more detailed briefing to justify and defend their legal position. Instead of providing the additional legal substantiation ordered by the court, the city chose to formally withdraw the dismissal motion from the record.
Following the withdrawal, the city legal department issued an unsigned statement defending its overarching practices while addressing the reversal. Municipal officials stated that city attorneys take all judicial opinions seriously and continuously evaluate their appeals, motions, and defensive arguments to ensure adherence to state rules and statutes, adding that any filings determined to be lacking will be dismissed, retracted, or avoided altogether.
Daragh Carter, an attorney representing the woman injured in the East Downtown crash, suggested that municipal lawyers recognized their position was untenable under legal scrutiny. Carter urged civil litigation leadership within the city to reexamine their continued use of such dismissal motions and consider whether the practice is legally appropriate and truly serves the public interest of Houston residents.
The withdrawal before Hawkins is part of a broader, documented pattern in Houston's municipal litigation. A review of court records by the Houston Chronicle revealed that city attorneys submitted Rule 91a dismissal requests in a majority of the first 20 vehicle collision lawsuits filed in state court earlier in the year.
The strategy has faced repeated resistance from appellate jurists in Texas. In a four-page opinion issued in July, the state 14th Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's denial of a municipal Rule 91a motion, listing four separate prior instances where the court had rejected the city’s reliance on the same tactic. The appellate panel affirmed the trial court's decision without finding it necessary to address the remainder of the city’s arguments.
While Rule 91a motions are specific to Texas state courts, federal judges have similarly voiced frustration regarding how Houston defends against civil claims arising from police crashes. That scrutiny was evident in the contentious litigation surrounding the death of 75-year-old Charles Payne, who was struck and killed in 2021 by a police vehicle traveling 70 mph in a 35 mph zone on North Shepherd Drive.
Payne’s family initially pursued their claims against the city in state court but transferred the litigation to federal court after municipal attorneys filed a Rule 91a motion to dismiss the action. When the city subsequently sought to dismiss the federal lawsuit in 2024 by asserting that Officer Christopher Cabrera was responding to an emergency, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals expressed dismay over the city’s continued resistance to the claim.
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