Texas opened its Business Court in September 2024 with 185 filings landing in its first year. Eighteen months later, that docket has produced exactly three trials that reached a verdict.
Todd Mensing tried one of them. That gap between two numbers, 185 filings and three trials, is the actual story of what this court has become, and Mensing’s own record inside it tracks that story closely.
A court built for handling not just complexity but volume
Filings in that first year split 106 original petitions and 79 removals from other courts, with the Houston division alone taking 79 cases and Dallas 52. Judges issued 42 written opinions and closed 60 cases in that stretch, 85% of them inside 180 days, a resolution pace closer to what a specialized federal docket produces than what a general civil docket typically manages. Those numbers describe a court doing real work.
The three trials, in order
Its first trial ran in November 2025. Tim Shelby of Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing led the defense of Marathon Oil Company against a $26.5 million claim over natural gas deliveries missed during Winter Storm Uri, tried before Judge Melissa Andrews in the court’s 11th Division. Five days of testimony ended in a defense verdict on the strength of a force majeure argument.
“It was an honor to try the first case in the Texas Business Court. It was a great experience. The case progressed to trial at warp speed, with the court streamlining the process by resolving key legal issues in advance,” Shelby said.
Mensing tried the second, defending a midstream gas company against a $200 million contract claim before Judge Patrick K. Sweeten in the Third Division. Sweeten read a favored shipper provision his client’s way, and the plaintiff recovered one dollar in damages plus a separate finding that the company had missed an unrelated 14-day disclosure deadline.
Two lawyers from the same roughly 70-lawyer firm tried the court’s first two completed cases, and won both.
The first jury trials arrived five months later
Every trial through 2025 was decided by a judge, not a jury. That changed in the first quarter of 2026, when the Business Court held its first two jury trials. One ended in a directed verdict for the defense after the plaintiffs finished presenting their case. The other ran eight days and produced a 10-2 jury verdict for the plaintiff. Neither involved Mensing’s firm.
That quarter also produced three rulings worth tracking for anyone pleading a case into the court going forward. One resolved how a buy-sell clause in an LLC governance dispute gets enforced against a departing member. Another set out how the court calculates the amount in controversy when a party adds supplemental claims after the original filing, a threshold question because the court only hears cases above a set dollar amount. A third found personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state airline based on its Texas operations. The ruling reaches disputes that touch the state commercially even when neither party is based in Texas.
None of those three rulings involved Mensing, and that is the point. A two-year-old court’s case law gets written by whoever happens to litigate there, not by any one firm, and lawyers practicing in it now have four completed trials and a small but growing body of written opinions to work from that did not exist when Shelby and Mensing tried their cases blind.
Practicing in a forum before it has settled habits
Going first in an untested court carries a cost that outlasts the verdict. Neither Shelby nor Mensing had a record of how these specific judges managed a trial calendar, weighed a Daubert motion, or handled a jury charge conference, because no one had tried a case in front of them yet. Shelby’s own account of the experience, that the court resolved threshold legal issues before trial and moved the case “at warp speed,” describes a court tailoring its own procedural rhythm case by case rather than following an established one.
Most commercial litigators avoid exactly that uncertainty when they have a choice. A removal decision or a forum election is usually made with an eye toward predictability, and a court with no trial history offers none. Firms with the volume to absorb an unpredictable first trial can afford to go first; firms trying their one big case of the year generally cannot, which is part of why the same small number of trial-heavy shops kept showing up first in the court’s early docket.
That has changed for the lawyers now filing there. A litigant weighing whether to remove a case into the Business Court, or fighting to keep one out of it, can point to 42 written opinions and four trial outcomes that did not exist in September 2024. A personality has emerged in the forum now, shaped in part by the two trials Mensing’s firm tried.
What a small trial count says about where to hire
A court with three completed trials in its first eighteen months is not a court where trial experience is common. Most lawyers now filing Business Court cases have never tried one there, because there has not been enough volume to generate that experience broadly across the Houston commercial bar.
Mensing has tried more than 60 cases across his career and has been in trial nearly every month at his firm since 2016, a cadence built long before this specific court existed. That volume is what let his firm go first in a new forum without it being a novel experience for the lawyer doing it.
For a general counsel choosing where to file, or which firm to hire once a matter lands there, the natural instinct is to look for a lawyer who understands this particular court best. Nobody has had time to develop that understanding yet, since the court itself is barely two years old and has produced only four verdicts to study. A more useful question is which lawyer has tried enough cases in enough courtrooms that a new one does not change how they try a case. Mensing and Shelby answered that question by trying the court’s first two cases before there was a body of decisions to learn from, and winning both.
Disclaimer: The content in this article is provided for general knowledge. It does not constitute legal advice, and readers should seek advice from qualified legal professionals regarding particular cases or situations.
