For plaintiff lawyers who handle underinsured-motorist claims in Texas, the difficulty was never proving the collision. It is the procedural wall the state's insurers have built around the bad-faith claim that rides alongside the coverage claim. In April 2025 the Texas Supreme Court reinforced that wall. Practitioners who file UIM suits anywhere the Brainard framework has influence should read the decision closely, because it dictates the order in which the case can be built.
The case is In re State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. and Lindsey Nicole Dessart, No. 23-0755, decided April 25, 2025 on mandamus. It is not a damages verdict or a coverage holding. It is a discovery ruling, and in Texas UIM practice, discovery sequencing is close to everything.
Start with the Brainard problem
Texas is unusual. Under the Supreme Court's 2006 decision in Brainard v. Trinity Universal Insurance Co., a UIM insurer has no contractual duty to pay until the insured obtains a judgment establishing the other driver's liability and fixing damages above the tortfeasor's available limits. Until that judgment exists, the insurer owes nothing, and because it owes nothing, there is no breach. No breach means the statutory and common-law bad-faith claims cannot yet accrue.
Insurers have turned that logic into a litigation posture. They move to bifurcate the contract claim from the extracontractual claims and to abate the latter until the UIM benefit is established. The result is a two-track case in which the plaintiff must first win a coverage-and-damages determination and only then pursue the insurer's handling conduct. Dessart addressed what discovery the insured can take while the extracontractual track is stayed.
What the Court decided
Two holdings matter. First, the Court confirmed that extracontractual claims are properly abated when the insured has not yet established entitlement to UIM benefits through a judgment or a declaratory determination. The bad-faith claim waits.
Second, and more practically, the Court limited the depositions an insured can take during the predicate phase. Where the insurer has stipulated to matters within its personal knowledge about the accident and produced its non-privileged file, the insured generally cannot compel a corporate-representative deposition aimed at the extracontractual issues. The Court framed this as a proportionality question. The burden of the deposition outweighed its likely benefit given what the insurer had already conceded and produced, so the trial court abused its discretion in ordering it. The insurer got its mandamus.
Read narrowly, the ruling is about one deposition. Read the way defense counsel will read it, it is a template: stipulate to the accident facts, produce the non-privileged file, and use those two moves to shut down extracontractual discovery until after judgment.
Why it lands on the plaintiff's desk
The strategic message is that the bad-faith leverage plaintiff lawyers rely on early in a UIM case is not available early in Texas. You cannot use the threat of aggressive claims-handling discovery to pressure a quick UIM settlement, because the discovery is stayed and the depositions are curtailed. The case has to be built front to back: liability and damages first, insurer conduct second.
That reorders the work. The predicate phase becomes a straightforward tort case against an empty chair, tried or arbitrated to fix the number. Only after the plaintiff secures a judgment or an agreed determination does the extracontractual claim come alive, and only then do the insurer's file, its reserves, and its handling timeline become fair game.
Building around the ruling
Several adjustments follow. Pin the insurer's stipulations down in writing and hold it to them. A stipulation that the accident happened as described, offered to defeat discovery, is also a stipulation you can use at the predicate trial. If the carrier wants the benefit of conceding accident facts, make the concession real and binding.
Preserve the extracontractual claim rather than abandoning it. Abatement is not dismissal. Document every delay, every unreturned call, and every lowball evaluation contemporaneously, because that record is the bad-faith case you get to try in phase two once the coverage judgment is in hand. The paper you build during the stay is the paper you use after it lifts.
And value the case honestly at intake. If the extracontractual upside is what makes a marginal UIM file worth taking, understand that the upside is deferred and contingent on winning the predicate phase first. That changes the economics of which files to accept and how to staff them.
How far the ruling travels
Brainard is a minority rule. Many states treat the UIM insurer's obligation as accruing without a separate liability judgment, and in those jurisdictions the bad-faith claim is available far earlier. So the specific holding in Dessart is Texas law, not a national rule. But the defense playbook it blesses, bifurcate the contract and bad-faith claims, then abate and starve the extracontractual discovery, is spreading. Insurers in other states are asking their courts for the same structure, and the results split by jurisdiction.
The lesson for practitioners outside Texas is to check the local rule before counting on early access to the claims file. The trend runs toward sequencing, and sequencing favors the carrier that plans for it. Our auto accidents desk tracks the state-by-state UIM coverage rules, our case law and settlements coverage follows the bad-faith procedure fights, and the net-recovery and lien mechanics that follow a UIM judgment sit in our liens and settlement reporting.
Dessart will not change a single liability fact in a Texas UIM case. It changes the order in which the plaintiff is allowed to prove them, and in UIM litigation, order is leverage.