Texas Sanctions: Types, Monetary Penalties, and How to Fight Them

Texas court sanctions are penalties a judge imposes on a party or attorney for misconduct during a lawsuit, and they range from monetary fines and attorney fee awards to orders that exclude evidence, strike pleadings, or send someone to jail for contempt. Which penalty you face depends on what you did, which rule the other side invokes, and how the judge weighs the harm against less severe options.

What Gets You Sanctioned in Texas

Most sanctions trace back to one of three things: filing something you shouldn’t have, refusing to play straight in discovery, or defying a court order. The rule the opposing party relies on shapes both the penalty menu and the process you get.

Frivolous or Bad-Faith Filings

Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 13 treats every signature on a pleading or motion as a certification that the filing is not groundless and was not made in bad faith or to harass. A violation triggers the sanctions menu in Rule 215.2(b).¹

Chapter 10 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code adds a parallel certification: the filing is not for an improper purpose, the legal arguments have support in existing law or a good-faith argument to change it, and the factual claims have evidentiary support or are likely to after further investigation.² A violation lets the court order the offender to pay the other party’s reasonable expenses and attorney fees. If the violator showed no due diligence at all, the court can also award costs for inconvenience, harassment, and out-of-pocket losses.³

Discovery Abuse

Discovery is where most sanctions fights happen. Under Rule 215, when a party refuses to produce documents, sit for a deposition, answer interrogatories, or allow inspection, the other side can move for sanctions without first getting an order compelling compliance.⁴ You do not always get a warning shot.

If a party then ignores a court order compelling discovery, Rule 215.2(b) lets the judge impose any combination of the following:

Barring the disobedient party from conducting further discovery
Deeming contested facts established in favor of the other side
Excluding designated evidence at trial
Striking pleadings or entering default judgment
Treating the failure as contempt of court
Ordering payment of the opposing party’s reasonable expenses, including attorney fees

That monetary award is required unless the court finds the failure was substantially justified or that an expense award would be unjust.⁵

Trial Misconduct and Disobeying Orders

Beyond the specific rules, judges have inherent authority to control their courtrooms. Attorneys or parties who disrupt proceedings, lie under oath, violate confidentiality orders, or otherwise defy the bench can be sanctioned without a specific rule violation. This category often bleeds into contempt, which carries its own consequences discussed below.

Monetary Penalties

Fines and fee awards are the most common outcome, and for most litigants they are also the most painful.

Fines Paid to the Court

Chapter 10 authorizes the court to order a violator to pay a penalty directly into the court.⁶ Rule 215.2 similarly allows the court to charge discovery expenses and taxable court costs against a disobedient party.⁵ The amount tracks the severity of the violation and what the judge thinks it will take to compel compliance. When a party still refuses to cooperate after a fine is imposed, the court can stack daily fines until the party relents.

Attorney Fee Awards

Under both Rule 13 and Chapter 10, the court can make the offender reimburse the other side’s legal costs. Chapter 10 authorizes awards of reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees caused by the sanctionable filing, and escalates to all litigation costs when the violator showed no due diligence.³ Rule 215.2 makes fee awards essentially automatic for discovery violations unless the court specifically finds the noncompliance was substantially justified.⁵

Texas courts calculate reasonable fees using the lodestar method: the reasonable hours spent, times a reasonable hourly rate, adjusted up or down if circumstances warrant. The party seeking fees must document the specific services, who did them, when, how long they took, and each person’s rate.⁷

Other Costs

Courts can also order reimbursement of expert witness fees, court reporter charges, travel costs, and any expenses caused by rescheduled proceedings. In complex commercial cases, the specialist and analyst bills alone can run into tens of thousands of dollars, and all of it can land on the offending party.

Nonmonetary Sanctions

Money is not the only tool. Nonmonetary sanctions often hit harder because they interfere directly with the ability to try the case.

Corrective Orders

Judges routinely order parties to undo the damage. A party who withheld documents can be forced to produce them immediately and barred from using undisclosed evidence at trial. A party who made false statements in a filing may be ordered to retract them. In family cases, a parent who violated a custody order can be ordered to provide makeup visitation. Chapter 10 specifically authorizes courts to order a violator to perform, or refrain from performing, an act.⁶

Mandated Attendance and Education

Judges sometimes require sanctioned individuals to complete specific programs. Attorneys who file frivolous motions may be ordered into continuing legal education on professional responsibility. In family disputes, obstructive parties can be required to attend co-parenting classes or mediation. Courts have also required corporate representatives to appear in person to answer for discovery failures.

Death Penalty Sanctions

The most severe civil sanction is striking a party’s pleadings, which effectively ends the case without a trial on the merits. A defendant whose answer is struck faces default judgment. A plaintiff whose petition is dismissed leaves with nothing.

Because the consequences are so extreme, the Texas Supreme Court has said these sanctions are a last resort.⁸ Before imposing one, a court generally must satisfy four requirements:

A direct relationship between the misconduct and the sanction
A penalty no more severe than necessary to promote compliance
A record showing lesser sanctions were tried and failed
An egregious-conduct exception that permits skipping lesser sanctions, but only if the record shows the court considered them and concluded they would not work⁹

A trial court that jumps straight to striking pleadings without first testing lesser measures will usually be reversed. In one recent decision, the Texas Supreme Court vacated a sanction that struck a company’s pleadings because the trial court failed to consider or test lesser sanctions first.⁸ The practical lesson: take every lesser sanction seriously. Ignoring a fine or a corrective order builds the exact record a judge needs to justify the ultimate penalty.

Contempt of Court

Contempt is a separate enforcement track from Rule 13, Rule 215, and Chapter 10 sanctions. Where those rules manage litigation conduct, contempt punishes defiance of the court’s authority itself, and it can mean jail time.

Civil contempt is coercive. Its purpose is to force compliance, and the contemnor can typically purge it by doing what the court originally ordered. A party who refuses to turn over financial records in a divorce case, for example, may be jailed until they produce them.

Criminal contempt is punitive and fixed. Subsequent compliance does not erase it. In district and county courts, the maximum punishment is a $500 fine, up to six months in county jail, or both. In justice courts and municipal courts, the ceiling is a $100 fine, up to three days in jail, or both.¹⁰

Whether the conduct happens in front of the judge matters. Direct contempt (shouting in court, refusing to answer from the stand) can be punished immediately without a separate hearing. Constructive contempt (disobedience outside the courtroom) requires written notice of what you allegedly did and a hearing where you can present a defense.

The Proportionality Limit on Every Sanction

No matter which rule the other side invokes, the judge cannot simply reach for the harshest penalty available. Under the Texas Supreme Court’s TransAmerican framework, a sanction is “just” only if two things are true. First, there must be a direct relationship between the misconduct and the penalty: the sanction has to target the actual abuse, remedy the harm to the innocent party, and land on the right person, which requires the court to decide whether the fault lies with the attorney, the client, or both. Second, the sanction cannot be excessive; the punishment has to fit the offense, and the court must consider whether a lesser measure would accomplish the same goal.⁹

This limit matters most on appeal. A judge who imposes a heavy sanction without explaining why lesser measures would not work is exposed to reversal. If you are on the receiving end of a sanctions motion, document every effort you made to comply. If you are the one seeking sanctions, build the record showing the penalty you want is the minimum necessary.

How to Fight a Sanctions Order

A sanctions order is not the last word. Texas gives you three ways to challenge one, each with its own timing.

Motion for New Trial or Reconsideration

Start with the trial court. Under Rule 329b, a motion for new trial must be filed within 30 days after the order is signed.¹¹ The motion argues legal or factual error, or that the sanction is out of proportion to the conduct. Filing it has a second benefit: it extends the appeal deadline from 30 days to 90 days.¹²

Appeal

If the trial court denies relief, you can appeal. Without a motion for new trial, the notice of appeal is due within 30 days of the judgment. With one, you get 90 days.¹² Appellate courts review sanctions for abuse of discretion, meaning you have to show the trial court acted arbitrarily or without reference to guiding legal principles.⁹ That is a high bar, but sanctions do get overturned, particularly when the trial court skipped the proportionality analysis or jumped to a case-terminating penalty without trying lesser alternatives.

Writ of Mandamus

When an ordinary appeal would come too late to fix the harm, you can seek a writ of mandamus from an appellate court. Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy: it requires a clear abuse of discretion and no other adequate legal remedy. It is most useful against death penalty sanctions or orders forcing disclosure of privileged material, because in those cases waiting for a final judgment would leave the damage done. The writ asks the appellate court to step in immediately and order the trial court to reverse course.

When to Bring in a Lawyer

The right time to get counsel involved is before the sanctions order is entered, not after. Once a judge signs the order, your options narrow and your costs climb. An attorney who works in Texas sanctions practice can attack the factual basis for the motion, argue proportionality under TransAmerican, and preserve the issues you will need for appeal or mandamus if the trial court rules against you. For businesses in particular, early legal involvement is what keeps a discovery dispute from escalating into a case-terminating sanction.

1
South Texas College of Law Houston. Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 13 – Effect of Signing of Pleadings, Motions and Other Papers; Sanctions
2
State of Texas. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 10.001 – Signing of Pleadings and Motions
3
State of Texas. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 10.002 – Motion for Sanctions
4
South Texas College of Law. Texas Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 215 – Abuse of Discovery; Sanctions
5
South Texas College of Law. Texas Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 215.2 – Failure to Comply with Order or with Discovery Request
6
State of Texas. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 10.004 – Sanctions
7
FindLaw. Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare LLP
8
Supreme Court of Texas. In re Newkirk Logistics, Inc.
9
CaseMine. TransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. v. Powell
10
State of Texas. Texas Government Code Section 21.002 – Contempt of Court
11
South Texas College of Law Houston. Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 329b – Time for Filing Motions
12
Texas Courts. Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure – Rule 26.1 Civil Cases