Requests for admission are the only discovery in Texas that decides the case by being ignored. No motion, no order, no hearing — miss the deadline and every request is admitted as a matter of law. Cases have been lost to a stack of paper nobody opened.
The rule that makes them deadly also makes them undoable. Rule 198.3 lets the court withdraw them on good cause where the other side is not unduly prejudiced, and the Supreme Court of Texas has been notably willing to say so.
What has happened since the responses were due?
Deemed admissions are undone far more readily before they have been used than after.
What date were the responses due?
We hold the published Texas case law in our own index and query it directly. No vendor sits between the question and the answer. That is the reason a discrete motion can carry a price on a web page instead of an hourly rate and a hope.
Pulled from our index for this mechanism and read by a lawyer before it went on this page. A green check means the decision is on point for this posture. It is not a statement that the case has been shepardized, and it is not a representation about its current precedential standing.
Counts are the number of later decisions in our index that cite the case. A high count means a case has been used, not that it is good law. Nothing on this page is a citator signal and we will not show one until it is produced by reading opinions rather than counting them.
Deemed admissions that decide the merits are treated differently from ones that tidy up a fact. When they are being used to win the case outright, the constitutional argument gets stronger rather than weaker — which is the opposite of what most people assume.
Where admissions dispose of the case, Marino says they should be withdrawn absent flagrant bad faith or callous disregard.
A motion to withdraw is far stronger filed with the actual answers attached, so the court can see what the truth is.
Losing the benefit of an admission is not prejudice. Prejudice means the other side cannot now prepare — a distinction that decides these.
Depending on how recently it was signed, a motion for new trial or a restricted appeal may still be open. This is time-sensitive.
Or send nothing but the document and let us find the rest. Dropping the file at the top of this page is the whole first step.
We will read it and tell you what we would do if we represented you on this single task — what we would file, on what ground, and what it would cost to have us do it.