Judge Brian Stagner
Docket 8B of the Texas Business Court’s Eighth Division, in Fort Worth. His standing requirements, last revised April 1, 2026, and his written record through August 10, 2026, sixteen coded decisions, are both summarized here, with dates and sources.
Who he is
Brian Stagner was appointed to the Texas Business Court by Governor Greg Abbott effective September 1, 2024, one of two judges named to the new Fort Worth division. On July 29, 2026 the Governor reappointed him, along with every other sitting Business Court judge, to a term running through September 1, 2028.
He came to the bench from Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP in Fort Worth, where he spent 27 years as a partner and co-chaired the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. His practice was complex business litigation in more than forty states: corporate-governance disputes, unfair-business-practices claims, e-commerce, insurance coverage, taxation, consumer class actions, and intellectual property. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America every year since 2010 and teaches Business Law as an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University. His law degree is from Texas Tech University School of Law, summa cum laude, Law Review, Order of the Coif; his business degree in management is from Angelo State University.
He holds Docket 8B. Judge Jerry D. Bullard holds Docket 8A. The division sits in Fort Worth and covers eighteen North Texas counties; its complete published record, every opinion with holdings, is on the Eighth Division page.
His published requirements, arranged by what you are about to do
The court posts standing requirements for each judge. Judge Stagner’s current document is Judge Stagner Specific Requirements, last revised April 1, 2026, at txcourts.gov. What follows is a practitioner summary, reorganized around the task in front of you and keyed to the document’s own section numbers. The document controls. Where this page and the PDF differ, follow the PDF.
Scheduling the case
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| A joint proposed scheduling order and case status report are due within 30 days of a defendant’s appearance or the case’s removal or transfer. | § 1 |
| Trial must be set within 13 months of filing. Contact the court manager for available trial dates; a case may be called on its set date or within 14 days after. | § 1 |
| Discovery must close at least 4 months before trial, and a final pretrial hearing is required at least 10 days before trial. | § 1 |
Reaching chambers
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| The preferred channel is email to the court manager at BCDivision8B@txcourts.gov. A phone line, 817-618-9028, is listed for scheduling disputes. | § 3.C |
| If you file a sur-reply, notify chambers by email so the judge sees it before any related setting. | § 4.A |
Motions: format, deadlines, proposed orders
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Word limits follow Business Court Local Rule 5. A request to exceed a limit must be made at least two days before the filing deadline, with a persuasive justification. | §§ 3.A, 3.F |
| Minimum 12-point font, with 11-point permitted only in footnotes; the judge prefers 13-point, double-spaced, fully justified text. Pages must be numbered continuously, attachments included. Any filing over 10 pages needs a table of contents and a table of authorities. | §§ 3.A, 3.E |
| Responses to non-dispositive motions are due 10 days after the motion is filed; replies are due 7 days after the response, unless a Texas Rule of Civil Procedure sets a different deadline for that motion type. | § 3.B |
| Every motion needs a proposed order as a separate Word document, not a PDF, emailed to the court manager with the case number and motion title in the subject line. | § 3.D |
| Paper courtesy copies are required for any motion, response, or reply, appendices included, that exceeds 25 pages: double-sided, and tabbed, spiral-bound, or in a three-ring binder. | § 3.G |
| A motion to extend a deadline must show good cause. If the court denies it, the original filing is due by 5:00 p.m. Central on the first business day after the ruling, unless the order says otherwise. | § 6 |
| The court arranges its own reporter for trials and dispositive-motion hearings. For any other hearing or conference, a party wanting a reporter must tell the court. | § 3.H |
Discovery
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Every case is deemed Discovery Level 3 under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 190.4. | § 2.A |
| A template protective order is posted on the division’s webpage; a proposed order that tracks it without substantive changes is treated as acceptable to the court. | § 2.B |
| Counsel are encouraged to negotiate an ESI protocol covering data sources, custodians, volume, custodian-by-custodian search terms, rolling production, deduplication, forensic-exam procedures, production format, metadata fields, and transmission method. If the parties cannot agree, either side may request a setting and must file competing proposed protocols at least five days beforehand. | § 2.C |
| Within 14 days of the scheduling order being filed, counsel must discuss with their clients what ESI custodians and sources exist, the duty to preserve, and the logistics, burden, and expense of preservation. | § 2.D |
| Before a motion to compel, the parties must confer on each disputed request or objection. The motion must attach the underlying requests and responses and explain how the sought discovery supports specific claim or defense elements. | § 2.E |
Hearings
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| After filing a contested motion, the movant must promptly seek a setting, conferring with opposing counsel on available dates first. A notice of oral hearing, stating date, time, place, and whether it is evidentiary, must be filed and served. Oral hearings are in person unless the judge directs otherwise. | §§ 4.A-4.B |
| By agreement, and absent a judge-requested oral hearing, a motion may be submitted on the papers, with submission dates no earlier than 14 days after filing. | § 4.C |
| No setting is needed for certain unopposed or procedural motions: substitute or alternative service, default judgment, pro hac vice admission, and agreed or unopposed motions. E-file the proposed order as a separate Word document at the same time. | § 4.D |
| Examine witnesses from the podium; approach a witness only to hand up or examine an exhibit. | § 5.A |
| The judge affirmatively encourages less-experienced lawyers to argue or examine witnesses, especially those who drafted the filing or prepared the witness, and is open to more than one lawyer per side arguing to create that opportunity. | § 5.B |
| Electronic presentation aids are welcome when they genuinely help the court follow the argument or evidence. Any handout must also go to opposing counsel, the court reporter, and the staff attorney. Outside hardware requires advance coordination with courthouse staff on security, power, and logistics. | §§ 5.C-5.D |
Trial, judgment, and after
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Filings are open to public inspection by default. A party seeking to seal a document must show necessity and comply with Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 76a. | § 7 |
| The judge favors mediation, particularly early in the case, and may order more than one session. Party representatives are expected to mediate in person unless the court excuses that. | § 8.A |
| Tell the court promptly when the case settles. The trial setting stays on the docket until a signed nonsuit or agreed dismissal, an agreed judgment, or a notice of settlement from all parties is actually filed. | § 8.B |
| Continuances require good cause; the judge does not recognize an automatic first continuance. Trial time per side is set at the pretrial hearing, and the parties must estimate the hours they will need. | §§ 9.A-9.B |
| A proposed pretrial order, on the template posted on the division’s webpage, is due at least seven days before the pretrial hearing, with the parties expected to work in good faith toward an agreed version. Motions in limine must be tailored to the actual case, not boilerplate lists of generic requests. | §§ 9.C-9.D |
| Proposed jury questions and instructions must cite supporting legal authority and be emailed to the court manager in Word format. After a jury verdict, or after notice of a bench ruling, the parties have 30 days to e-file either one agreed judgment or competing proposed judgments, and either side may ask for a hearing on the judgment’s form before entry. | §§ 9.E-9.G |
| Within 10 days of a timely request for findings of fact and conclusions of law, email a Word version of the proposed findings to the court manager; e-filing them is allowed but not required. | § 9.H |
A written opinion is discretionary. Under section 10 of the requirements, a request for one must be made no later than the first day of the hearing, setting, or trial where the issue is decided, and whether to issue one remains entirely up to the court. The sixteen decisions summarized below exist because someone asked in time, or the court chose to write.
His written record: sixteen coded decisions
Across the statewide corpus of 123 published Business Court opinions we coded through August 24, 2026, sixteen carry Judge Stagner’s signature. Every one of the sixteen prints his name in the signature block; no attribution inference is needed. Nine bear an Eighth Division caption; seven bear an Eleventh Division caption from Houston sittings. The first is 2025 Tex. Bus. 29 of August 4, 2025; the most recent is 2026 Tex. Bus. 56 of August 10, 2026. Fifteen of the sixteen are memorandum opinions.
| Matter type | Decisions |
|---|---|
| Summary judgment | 7 |
| Jurisdictional threshold and pleas to the jurisdiction | 3 |
| Removal and remand | 2 |
| Attorney’s fees | 2 |
| Rule 91a dismissal on the merits | 1 |
| Temporary injunction | 1 |
Ten of the sixteen decide the merits rather than where or whether the case proceeds, the reverse of the pattern on Docket 8A, where thirteen of eighteen coded decisions are threshold rulings. Both of his remand rulings denied remand and kept the case in the Business Court.
How long a ruling takes
Ten of the sixteen recite both the motion’s filing date and the ruling date. Across those ten, the median interval was 47 days, against a statewide median of 63 across the 44 opinions reciting both dates. The fastest single interval was 4 days, on a remand motion; the slowest was 217; the middle half fell roughly between 37 and 66 days.
| Judge | Median days, motion to ruling | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Judge Stagner (Docket 8B) | 47 | n=10 |
| Judge Whitehill (First Division) | 50.5 | n=6 |
| Statewide, all coded opinions | 63 | n=44 |
| Judge Bullard (Docket 8A) | 79 | n=16 |
Read the table with care. The samples are small, they capture only motions that produced a published opinion reciting its own dates, the mix of motion types on a docket moves the number, and judges with fewer than five recited intervals are omitted.
The statewide corpus itself is catalogued by the SMU Corporate Governance Initiative, whose Texas Business Court Codex is the standing descriptive index of the court’s output and the resource we point people to for court-wide coverage. The procedural computations above, motion-to-ruling intervals and per-judge splits, are ours, built by reading each opinion, and they complement the Codex rather than duplicate it. Method, base sizes, and every division’s numbers are in the performance report; every coded decision, sortable, is in the case tracker.
Decisions worth reading first
Lensabl v. RBH SPE One, 2025 Tex. Bus. 44 (November 5, 2025). Veil piercing tested at the pleading stage. The court granted Rule 91a dismissal of the veil-piercing and breach-of-contract claims against an individual defendant but allowed the fraud claim to proceed.
CRS Mechanical v. Norfolk Cold Storage, 2025 Tex. Bus. 46 (November 14, 2025). Summary judgment barring recovery of attorney’s fees on declaratory-judgment counterclaims found duplicative of other claims or outside the court’s jurisdiction.
Galderma Laboratories v. Brenner, 2026 Tex. Bus. 12 (March 12, 2026). A temporary injunction enforcing only the noncompete covenant, with relief denied on the nonsolicit, confidentiality, and trade-secret claims. The narrowest reading of restrictive covenants in his set.
Energy Founders Fund v. Daskevich, 2026 Tex. Bus. 17, 18 and 34 (April 9, April 10 and May 29, 2026). One LLC dispute, three rulings. Fee advancement was denied because the underlying claims did not arise by reason of director service. Unit transfers were held to require only majority board approval. And affiliate status was held to require present-tense control, which post-closing governance rights cannot retroactively create.
The Mark at Weatherford Owner v. German, 2026 Tex. Bus. 22 (May 6, 2026), and Camino Real Developers v. RivenRock, 2026 Tex. Bus. 28 (May 15, 2026). Two contract-construction rulings on summary judgment: fees owed at closing were a payable obligation whose default triggered a put right, and a member’s interest is inseparable from the company agreement, whose dilution mechanism was confirmed as valid.
Village Crossing v. West Creek Investments, 2026 Tex. Bus. 49 (July 22, 2026), and Riverside Homebuilders v. FG Aledo Development, 2026 Tex. Bus. 53 (July 29, 2026). A statute-of-frauds pair, one week apart. Both land-sale agreements were held unenforceable because the legal description could not identify the property with reasonable certainty when the contract was signed; in the first, a future survey could not cure the defect.
Fischer v. Fischer, 2026 Tex. Bus. 54 (July 29, 2026). A court-appointed receiver retains derived judicial immunity from suit; claims against the receiver-created entities survived the Rule 91a motion to dismiss.
Every holding on this page is a paraphrase. Our research read the opinions through a rendering layer rather than the certified documents, so treat these descriptions as pointers. Before citing language to a court, pull the PDF from the court’s opinions list and quote the opinion itself.
He also sits in Houston
Seven of the sixteen coded decisions, 2026 Tex. Bus. 17, 18, 23, 34, 39, 49 and 56, carry Eleventh Division captions. The most recent states the arrangement on its face: the signature block of 2026 Tex. Bus. 56, of August 10, 2026, describes him as Judge of the Texas Business Court, Eighth Division, sitting by assignment in the Eleventh Division. The statutory mechanism for a sitting Business Court judge to hear another division’s cases is Texas Government Code section 25A.009, which permits the judges to exchange benches; section 25A.014 concerns visiting judges drawn from retired or former judges and does not reach a sitting judge. We have not seen the underlying orders, so this page does not assert which mechanism produced any given sitting.
The practical consequence is unambiguous: a search limited to Eighth Division captions misses seven of this judge’s sixteen published decisions, including the entire Energy Founders Fund series. Whether a dispute belongs in this court at all is a separate question; the test is on the jurisdiction page.
Common questions
How fast does Judge Stagner rule on a motion?
Across the ten of his sixteen coded decisions that recite both the motion’s filing date and the ruling date, the median interval was 47 days, against a statewide median of 63 across the 44 opinions reciting both dates. The fastest single interval was 4 days and the slowest 217. The sample includes only motions that produced a published opinion reciting its own dates, so treat it as an indication, not a promise.
When are responses and replies due before Judge Stagner?
Responses to non-dispositive motions are due 10 days after the motion is filed, and replies are due 7 days after the response, unless a Texas Rule of Civil Procedure sets a different deadline for that motion type. See section 3.B of his standing requirements, last revised April 1, 2026.
How do I reach Judge Stagner’s chambers?
Email the court manager at BCDivision8B@txcourts.gov; his standing requirements name that as the preferred channel. A phone line, 817-618-9028, is listed for scheduling disputes. Proposed orders, jury-charge materials, and proposed findings go to the court manager as Word documents.
Does Judge Stagner hear cases outside Fort Worth?
Yes. Seven of his sixteen coded decisions carry an Eleventh Division caption from Houston sittings, and the signature block of 2026 Tex. Bus. 56 describes him as Judge of the Eighth Division sitting by assignment in the Eleventh Division. Texas Government Code section 25A.009 permits Business Court judges to exchange benches and sit for one another.
Sources
Primary: Judge Stagner Specific Requirements (last revised April 1, 2026) · Texas Business Court biography · Governor’s Fort Worth appointment release · Reappointment coverage, Texas Lawbook, July 29, 2026 · Tex. Gov’t Code ch. 25A.
Statewide statistics: the Texas Business Court Codex of the SMU Corporate Governance Initiative catalogues the corpus. The outcome coding of all 123 opinions and every interval computation on this page are Kraus Law’s own, and each figure states its base.
Last updated August 28, 2026. Record current through 2026 Tex. Bus. 56, issued August 10, 2026, re-checked against the court’s opinions list on August 28, 2026 with no further Stagner-signed opinion found; requirements current as of the April 1, 2026 revision. Free to cite with attribution. Corrections to hello@kraus.law.
The requirements are the easy part. Whether your dispute belongs in this court is the question that decides everything after it.