Amount in Controversy

Every jurisdictional fight in the Texas Business Court eventually becomes an argument about a number. Under H.B. 40, effective September 1, 2025, the statute sets that number at more than $5,000,000 for claims under both Tex. Gov't Code § 25A.004(b) and § 25A.004(d), and it tells you what to leave out of the calculation. Interest, statutory damages, exemplary damages, penalties, attorney's fees and court costs do not count. What counts is the compensatory value of the claim.

Whose claims, and when

H.B. 40 added § 25A.004(i), which provides that the amount in controversy is the total of all claims of all parties joined in the action. The text does not mention counterclaims, so whether a $3,000,000 counterclaim and a $2,500,000 petition together clear the threshold depends on how courts read "all joined parties' claims." This widens the door, and it gives a removing party a reason to look at the whole pleading file rather than only the live claim against it.

Timing is the other half. The amount is measured as of filing, on the facts as they stood then. A claim that grows over the life of a contract is not valued by its future potential.

Black Mountain and the accrual problem

The Eighth Division faced this directly in Black Mountain SWD v. NGL Water Solutions Permian, 2025 Tex. Bus. 24 (8th Div. June 30, 2025). The dispute concerned a royalty obligation. The party invoking jurisdiction wanted the court to value the whole disputed royalty stream over the remaining life of the agreement, which would comfortably have cleared the threshold. The court declined. It measured instead the royalties that had accrued between execution and the filing of suit, found no more than $4.5 million, short of the $10 million threshold that then applied to qualified-transaction cases under § 25A.004(d)(1), and remanded.

The reasoning travels well beyond oilfield water disposal. A long-term supply agreement, a licence, a management contract or a lease each generates a stream of obligations, and a plaintiff who sues early has a smaller case than the same plaintiff suing after five years of accrual.

Pleading and proof

The business court applies a burden-shifting standard. The amount pleaded in the petition, or in the notice of removal when the petition is silent, ordinarily controls. In a removed case, if a party presents evidence that the amount is outside the court's jurisdiction, the court will remand unless another party offers controverting evidence that at least raises a fact issue. When privileges or rights other than damages are at stake, their good-faith value can count toward the threshold.

One exception removes the arithmetic entirely. Under § 25A.004(c), if a publicly traded company is a party to an action described in subsection (b), there is no threshold at all.