Opinion

The Court ordered a trial court to dismiss a plaintiff’s attempt to involve a commercial insurer in his claim against a former workplace.

The Court framed the decision under the “no direct action” rule, which generally bars a plaintiff from directly suing an insurance company with whom they do not have a contractual relationship. Here, the insurer had denied coverage to the former employer (San Diego Tortilla).

The plaintiff argued that, because he sought on a declaratory judgment, his case did not offend that principle. The Supreme Court disagreed, seeing in it the same policy concerns because the “no direct action” rule — avoiding conflicts of interest between insurer and insured, while preventing the need for a jury determining the underlying workplace injury to also hear about the presence of liability insurance (normally barred under Texas Rule of Evidence 411).

The Court concluded that mandamus relief was appropriate because the effect of joining these claims together would be too difficult to disentangle on appeal. Thus, it chose “to spare the parties and the public the time and money spent on fatally flawed proceedings.”