Key Takeaways
- Texas Supreme Court proposes new rule adopting key provisions of the UIDDA to streamline interstate discovery
- New Rule 201.3 is open for comment until August 1, 2025
- Texas Legislature has given the Supreme Court until September 1, 2025, to adopt the UIDDA
Last month, the Supreme Court of Texas proposed new Texas Rule of Civil Procedure, 201.3, that “would adopt the Uniform Interstate Depositions and Discovery Act,” commonly known as the UIDDA. The rule is open for comment until Aug. 1.
The April 30 proposal is the latest step by Texas toward joining the other 47 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have adopted the 2007 UIDDA.[1] The Texas Legislature passed H.B. 3929 back in 2023, and it took effect on Sept. 1, 2023. Though that bill prompted the Supreme Court to adopt the UIDDA, it did not contain the text from the UIDDA and only served as an invitation for the Supreme Court to consider the Act by Sept. 1.
The UIDDA streamlines the process for propounding and responding to interstate discovery. States cannot inherently enforce other states’ subpoenas. While a Texas court can issue its own subpoena enforcing the out-of-state subpoena’s contents, each state is free to have different procedures for doing so. The Uniform Law Commission’s UIDDA was an answer to this nonuniform process across states by proposing a streamlined procedure for interstate discovery.
[1] The other two states that have not adopted it, Missouri and Massachusetts, have introduced a bill to enact the UIDDA.
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