MONROE v. SANDERSON FARMS LLC (2025)

ORDER

Plaintiff moves to vacate or clarify this court's order (Doc. 10) governing discovery and production of information in support of a claim for medical expenses in this personal-injury action. Doc. 26. That motion is denied in part and granted in part.

1. The motion is denied insofar as it requests vacatur on the basis that the court's procedures do not comport with Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 18.001. Under the Erie doctrine, “federal courts apply substantive state law when adjudicating diversity-jurisdiction claims, but in doing so apply federal procedural law to the proceedings.” Cates v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 928 F.2d 679, 687 (5th Cir. 1991).

Texas law defining what types of damages are recoverable on a claim and how those damages are measured is substantive law. Homoki v. Conversion Servs., Inc., 717 F.3d 388, 398 (5th Cir. 2013). For example, Texas law provides that a tortious-interference-with-contract claim allows recovery of expectancy damages and that expectancy damages can be measured by lost profits shown with reasonable certainty to be proximately caused by the interference. Id. at 398–401. But whether some type of evidence suffices to meet a substantive standard provided by state law is procedural. As the Fifth Circuit explained in Homoki, the “sufficiency of the evidence supporting a damages award, however, is a matter of federal procedure.” Id. at 398.

Here, Texas law allows the recovery of medical expenses paid for the reasonable and necessary treatment of personal injury proximately caused by an actor's negligence. Haygood v. De Escabedo, 356 S.W.3d 390, 391 (Tex. 2011) (Hecht, C.J.) (“Damages for wrongful personal injury include the reasonable expenses for necessary medical care ․”). And the Texas Legislature has limited recovery of medical expenses “to the amount actually paid or incurred by or on behalf of the claimant.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.0105. Both of those principles are substantive rules under Erie. They define a right to recovery and thus set the extent of liability for negligence. E.g., Haygood, 356 S.W.3d at 391–92 (verdict for the over $110,000 billed by medical providers was reversed because less than $30,000 was paid by Medicare as reasonable).

But Monroe's motion does not rest on any Texas law about recovering medical expenses. It rests on a Texas statute about pre-trial notice of disputes regarding any type of service charge. Section 18.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets a procedure by which one party to litigation may require another party to that litigation to give pretrial notice of the basis on which it intends at trial to controvert the first party's claim that a service was necessary or that the amount charged was reasonable.

Specifically, if (1) the first party makes such a claim by an affidavit in the correct form, with the correct records attached, and served at the correct time in litigation, defined based off deadlines for expert disclosures; and (2) the opposing party does not serve a counteraffidavit in the correct form and at the correct time in litigation; then (3) the initial affidavit suffices to support a finding of its facts. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 18.001(b)–(g). That section allows for the same result as to charges for services continuing during the litigation if a similar procedure is followed with respect to them. Id. § 18.001(h).

To my ears, this statute screams “procedural.” It does not define the remedies for any cause of action. It does not exclude any type of proof as a measure of damages. And § 18.001’s intricate scheme is repeatedly tied to litigation deadlines. It is essentially an opt-in discovery procedure. The statute lets a party say: “give me your proof now, on the timeline responsive to my timely production of records in the form specified, or else you lose the right to contest my records at trial.” Creating rights to pretrial notice in litigation is a classic procedural move.

The Texas Supreme Court agreed in Haygood, calling the statute “purely procedural.” 356 S.W.3d at 397 (describing it as a way to “streamline proof”). Even the dissent in Haygood agreed that § 18.001 governs “procedures for proving damages.” Id. at 404 (Lehrmann, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). Of course, procedures are important too. They can create efficiencies and save costs. But that does not make § 18.001 part of a state's substantive state law that controls in federal diversity cases.

To come at it another way, imagine that a plaintiff in state court does not serve a pretrial affidavit about the service charges it paid. That plaintiff remains free to prove facts about those service charges at trial. It has simply elected not to use a pretrial mechanism for streamlining the proof at trial. That election in no way controls the outcome of the plaintiff's claim.

Likewise here. By declining to offer recourse to the § 18.001 procedure in this case, the court is not determining the outcome of Monroe's claim. So even if Erie looked solely at outcome determination—and it does not—§ 18.001 would still qualify as procedural. See generally All Plaintiffs v. All Defendants, 645 F.3d 329, 336 (5th Cir. 2011) (giving history of the “outcome determination” test, which is a touchstone but is not “applied mechanically to sweep in all manner of variations” as substantive) (quoting Gasperini v. Ctr. For Humans., Inc., 518 U.S. 415, 428 (1996)).

For those reasons, and with respect to the judges who view the matter differently, the undersigned joins the majority of Texas district judges who hold that § 18.001 is procedural under Erie and that a federal court sitting in diversity need not follow § 18.001’s regime. See Baird v. Shagdarsuren, No. 3:17-cv-02000, 2019 WL 2286084, at *2 (N.D. Tex. May 29, 2019); Duron v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 3:23-cv-00324, 2025 WL 2429084, at *1 (W.D. Tex. June 16, 2025) (noting “the majority view is that it is procedural”).

Of course, federal procedure itself gives a court discretion to control discovery by imposing deadlines for the identification and substantiation of factual disputes and by imposing trial consequences if those deadlines are not met. Fed. R. Civ. P. 16, 26, 37. So the parties may ask the court to impose a procedure similar to § 18.001’s or may simply agree among themselves to stipulate to certain facts if not disputed by a certain time.

But that does not make § 18.001’s procedure federally required. Instead, if Monroe offers into evidence at trial an affidavit that might have triggered the § 18.001 procedure in state court, the affidavit's admissibility will be determined under the same Federal Rules of Evidence as govern the admissibility of all other affidavits. For example, that affidavit might meet the requirements of Federal Rules of Evidence 803(6) and 911 and be admitted if language about the reasonableness of the charges is stricken. Duron, 2025 WL 2429084, at *2. But the court will judge its admissibility under the federal rules of evidence and of civil procedure, not Texas's discovery regime.

2. Plaintiff's motion is granted, however, to the extent that it is not opposed by defendant. Just as the initial disclosures required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(1) or required by this court's Local Patent Rules can be excused by the court, so can the undersigned's default disclosure rules for medical expenses.

The court appreciates defendant's deference to the court's discretion. Doc. 28. But it leaves the court wondering whether defendant itself supports this discovery procedure or might prefer a different one. As such, the court vacates all but the first sentence of paragraph number 1 in its initial medical-expenses order. Doc. 10. Defendant remains free to serve discovery requests on those items and to propose any changes to the required initial disclosures to include any such information, if defendant so desires. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f)(3)(A). But the court will look to defendant to affirmatively move for any special rules governing pretrial production of medical-expenses information.

So ordered by the court on September 16, 2025.

J. Campbell Barker, United States District Judge