In Re ColossusBets Limited; Rook TX, LP; Rook GP, LLC; Qawi and Quddus, Inc.; And Lottery Now, Inc. v. the State of Texas

Denied and Opinion filed February 12, 2026

In The

Fifteenth Court of Appeals

NO. 15-25-00150-CV

IN RE COLOSSUSBETS LIMITED; ROOK TX, LP; ROOK GP, LLC;
QAWI AND QUDDUS, INC; LOTTERY NOW, INC.

Original Proceeding from the Business Court Division 3A
Travis County, Texas
Trial Court Cause No. 25-BC03A-0007

OPINION

When a case is removed to the Business Court, can a plaintiff compel remand
by nonsuiting all claims falling within that court’s statutory jurisdiction? Or is
removal a “one-way door” that when properly invoked, “no later fact or event can
defeat the court’s jurisdiction”1?

This is an important question, one that applies to many Business Court cases,

1
See Cont’l Coffee Products Co. v. Cazarez, 937 S.W.2d 444, 449 (Tex. 1996) (“As a general
rule, where jurisdiction is once lawfully and properly acquired, no later fact or event can defeat
the court’s jurisdiction.”).
is not directly addressed in the rules governing the Business Court, and will occur
repeatedly if not answered. Those considerations warrant mandamus review:

Mandamus review of significant rulings in exceptional cases may be
essential to preserve important substantive and procedural rights from
impairment or loss, allow the appellate courts to give needed and
helpful direction to the law that would otherwise prove elusive in
appeals from final judgments, and spare private parties and the public
the time and money utterly wasted enduring eventual reversal of
improperly conducted proceedings.2

Accordingly, without hearing oral argument,3 we deny the requested relief.

Background
In this unusual case, the winner of one Lotto Texas jackpot blames the winner
of a previous one for reducing his winnings. Plaintiff/Real Party Jerry Reed won
$7.5 million in the Lotto drawing held on May 17, 2023. But he alleges the Relators,
alleged as affiliated entities and individuals, “rigged” a drawing 26 days earlier by
purchasing “nearly all 25.8 million number combinations,” collecting $95 million,
and substantially reducing subsequent jackpots like the one Reed later won. Reed
alleged claims of money had and received, statutory violations of the State Lottery
Act and related regulations,4 and a string of derivative claims making all Defendants
jointly and severally liable.

Two Defendants removed the case to the Business Court,5 whose jurisdiction

2
In re Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 148 S.W.3d 124, 136 (Tex. 2004)
3
See TEX. R. APP. P. 52.8(b), (d).
4
See TEX. GOV’T CODE ch. 466 and 16 TEX. ADMIN. CODE ch. 140.
5
Defendants Rook TX, LP and Rook GP, LLC removed this case to the Business Court and
opposed Reed’s motions to remand. This petition was filed by Defendant ColussusBets Limited,
one of the eleven Defendants who were parties in suit below, who were alleged to be jointly and
severally liable, and who are bound by the remand order at issue. Reed recently informed us that
he nonsuited his claims against ColossusBets. But the Rook parties and defendants Qawi and
2
includes actions “regarding the governance, governing documents, or internal affairs
of an organization.”6 The Honorable Melissa Andrews, Judge of the Texas Business
Court, Third Division initially denied remand, citing Reed’s claims that (1) the entity
claiming the prize was created for the unlawful purpose of rigging the lottery and
concealing the identities of those involved; (2) the Defendants misrepresented that
the entity claiming the prize was formed before the drawing was held when it was
not; and (3) all Defendants were alleged to be “jointly and severally liable” for
Reed’s “financial injury.”

To avoid remand, Reed amended his petition twice in the next two months,
the last of which stated that he “expressly disclaims any allegation, legal theory, or
request for relief” implicating the Business Court’s jurisdiction. Eight minutes later,
he filed a “Renewed Motion to Remand” citing his removal of “all allegations that
would require adjudication of corporate governance, governing documents, or
internal affairs.” The Defendants conceded Reed had dropped all claims regarding
the purpose and timing of corporate formation, but urged the court to retain the case
based on its jurisdiction of trade regulation laws,7 qualified transactions,8 or
supplemental jurisdiction.9 Upon reconsideration, the Business Court rejected those
alleged grounds for retaining the case in a detailed 19-page opinion, and remanded
the case to the Travis County district court.

The question before us is not whether the court’s legal analysis of Reed’s
slimmed-down claims was correct. Relator ColossusBets Limited waived that issue

Quddus, Inc. and Lottery Now, Inc. filed an unopposed motion to join this mandamus proceeding,
which we granted. See TEX. R. APP. P. 9.7.
6
TEX. GOV’T CODE § 25A.004(b)(2).
7
See id. § 25A.004(b)(3).
8
See id. § 25A.004(d)(1).
9
See id. § 25A.004(f).

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in a footnote in its Petition (which all Relators have adopted) that assumes “for sake
of argument that there is no independent basis for Business Court jurisdiction.”
Relators instead seek mandamus based “only on the procedural question whether
jurisdiction, once exercised, can be lost.” Relators argue that the Business Court’s
initial denial of remand cannot be reconsidered based on “a blatantly forum-
shopping pleading amendment that sought to divest the court of jurisdiction.”

Analysis
A. Can the Business Court reconsider an order denying remand?
The general answer to Relators’ question is clear: “A trial court’s plenary
jurisdiction gives it not only the authority but the responsibility to review any pre-
trial order upon proper motion.”10 Absent a specific legal bar to reconsideration, this
is inherent in the definition of a trial court’s “plenary jurisdiction”: “A court’s full
and absolute power over the subject matter and the parties in a case.”11 In Texas, that
includes our lenient pleadings rules, which generally allow parties to amend their
pleadings as often as they wish, and absent proof of surprise or a court scheduling
order, they can do so until seven days before trial.12 This rule is incorporated into the
procedural rules applicable to the Business Court.13

Frequent reconsideration of prior orders is often unproductive, and particular
laws or rules may limit reconsideration in special cases, though few actually do. The
primary exception is an order granting or denying a motion to transfer venue; for the

10
Downer v. Aquamarine Operators, Inc., 701 S.W.2d 238, 241 (Tex. 1985) (emphasis
added).
11
See Plenary Jurisdiction, BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (12th ed. 2024).
12
See TEX. R. CIV. P. 63.
13
See id. R. 352.

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historical reasons we recently explained,14 no reconsideration of such orders is
allowed until a final appeal.15 But the trend is strongly against hobbling trial courts
with prior orders that trial judges may recognize were mistaken.

For example, for 50 years an order granting a new trial could not be
“ungranted” after 45 days, an exception the Supreme Court ended in 2008, stating:
“As with any other order, a trial court should be able to reconsider a new trial order
as long as a case is still pending.”16 More recently, the Supreme Court held that in
deciding whether an underlying suit was a health care liability claim, trial courts
“should consider an amended petition” even if filed after the deadline for expert
reports, because the statute “says nothing about whether or when a claimant can
amend her pleadings,” and “[o]ur rules generally permit parties to freely amend their
pleadings” except “when our procedural rules prohibit such a filing.17

Relators argue that the recent adoption of Rule 355(f) impliedly bars
reconsideration of a remand order from the Business Court, because its text
authorizes motions to remand “based on improper removal,” and requires remand if
“the business court determines, on motion or its own initiative, that removal was
improper.”18 Rook reasons that these two references to “improper removal”
effectively bar remand in all other cases, including a removal that was initially
proper as was the case here. But implying a negative rule from a positive statement

14
See In re AstraZeneca Pharm. LP, 2025 WL 3251532, at *3 (Tex. App.—15th Dist. 2025,
orig. proceeding).
15
See TEX. R. CIV. P. 87(5), (6); In re Team Rocket, L.P., 256 S.W.3d 257, 259–60 (Tex. 2008)
(“Team Rocket argues that only one venue determination may be made in a proceeding and that
Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 87 specifically prohibits changes in venue after the initial venue
ruling. We agree.”).
16
In re Baylor Med. Ctr. at Garland, 280 S.W.3d 227, 228, 230–32 (Tex. 2008).
17
Lake Jackson Med. Spa, Ltd. v. Gaytan, 640 S.W.3d 830, 837, 839 (Tex. 2022).
18
See TEX. R. CIV. P. 355(f).

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is risky, as the authors of laws, rules, and contracts often mean to address a specific
case without prejudice to others. “[T]he force of any negative implication depends
on context,” and it “does not apply unless it is fair to suppose that the [authors]
considered the unnamed possibility and meant to say no to it.”19

Here, the rules do not say that remand was limited exclusively to improper
removal. To the contrary, a parallel provision in the immediately preceding Rule 354
requires dismissal or transfer of a case filed directly in the Business Court if the court
“determines, on a party’s motion or its own initiative, that it does not have the
authority to hear the action”—regardless of whether the initial filing was proper or
not. Read in context, it would be unreasonable to construe these neighboring rules
to require that once the Business Court loses statutory jurisdiction, it must dismiss
all cases if they were properly filed there, but cannot dismiss any if they were
properly removed there. We hold the Business Court had jurisdiction to reconsider
its remand order.

B. Construing the Rules to avoid fluctuating jurisdiction
Aside from the text, Relators argue that accepting “forum-shopping pleading
amendments” would allow plaintiffs “to game themselves out of the Business
Court.” We recognize this concern. We recently declined to construe our own
jurisdictional statute to allow jurisdiction to “fluctuate” between two appellate courts
depending on whether the State opts in or out of a qui tam suit, as that would “lead
to such an absurd result.”20

The same concerns about jurisdictional manipulation apply to the Business
Court’s jurisdiction too. When state law gives parties a choice of litigation forums,

19
Forest Oil Corp. v. El Rucio Land & Cattle Co., Inc., 518 S.W.3d 422, 429 (Tex. 2017).
20
See In re Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC, 711 S.W.3d 732, 737 (Tex. App.—15th Dist. 2025, orig.
proceeding).

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“that choice cannot be abused.”21 Here, for example, Reed did not withdraw his
claims for “money had and received,” the elements of which are that the plaintiff
must show that “the defendant holds money which in equity and good conscience
belongs to him.”22 Read too broadly, that could supplant virtually any claim that falls
within the Business Court’s jurisdiction, providing an escape hatch from that court
if taken at face value.

But in his last amended petition, Reed removed that risk. He “expressly
disclaim[ed] any allegation, legal theory, or request for relief” implicating the
Business Court’s jurisdiction. That representation cannot be taken back later. As the
Supreme Court has held in several similar contexts, litigation conduct can create an
implied waiver that cannot be revoked: “we clarify here that the universal test for
implied waiver by litigation conduct is whether the party’s conduct—action or
inaction—clearly demonstrates the party’s intent to relinquish, abandon, or waive
the right at issue—whether the right originates in a contract, statute, or the
constitution.”23 By disavowing claims within the Business Court’s jurisdiction, we
hold that Reed has impliedly waived those claims.24

21
Perry Homes v. Cull, 258 S.W.3d 580, 584 (Tex. 2008).
22
See Plains Expl. & Prod. Co. v. Torch Energy Advisors Inc., 473 S.W.3d 296, 302 (Tex.
2015).
23
LaLonde v. Gosnell, 593 S.W.3d 212, 219–20 (Tex. 2019) (certificate of merit); see also In
re Greyhound Lines, Inc., 718 S.W.3d 250, 262 (Tex. 2025) (forum non conveniens); In re
Nationwide Ins. Co. of Am., 494 S.W.3d 708, 712 (Tex. 2016) (contractual forum selection clause);
In re Universal Underwriters of Tex. Ins. Co., 345 S.W.3d 404, 412 (Tex. 2011) (contractual
appraisal rights); Perry Homes v. Cull, 258 S.W.3d 580, 597 (Tex. 2008) (arbitration).
24
In certain contexts, waiver also requires a showing of prejudice. See LaLonde, 593 S.W.3d
at 219 & n.19 (arbitration and forum selection clauses). Even if that is the case here, (a question
we do not address), allowing Reed to continue to add or delete pleadings to manipulate Business
Court jurisdiction would prejudice Relators.

7
Conclusion
The Business Court statute does not prevent parties from choosing what
claims to file, even if that means forgoing certain business-related claims to avoid
that court’s reach. Relators are not harmed by Reed’s decision to abandon some of
his claims as the cost of returning to Travis County district court. But state law does
not reward artful pleading.25 Pleadings are construed by their substance, not their
form,26 and “statutory requirements cannot be circumvented by artful pleading.”27

We agree with the steps taken here to ensure that remand based on the current
petition not be undone after remand, thereby inviting a new removal,28 which might
keep this case bouncing back and forth. The Legislature mandated “prompt,
efficient, and final determination of business court jurisdiction on the filing of an
action in the business court.”29 That purpose and promise requires bright lines and
firm standards that leave no room for ambiguous pleading. Because that is not the
case here, we deny Relators’ petition.

25
See Pitts v. Rivas, 709 S.W.3d 517, 525 (Tex. 2025) (“[T]he law should not reward artful
pleading. Where possible, courts should look to the gravamen or underlying nature of the claim
and apply the law accordingly.” (internal citation and footnote omitted)); Murphy v. Russell, 167
S.W.3d 835, 838 (Tex. 2005) (“We reaffirm that a claimant cannot escape the Legislature's
statutory scheme by artful pleading.”).
26
George Fleming & Fleming & Assocs., L.L.P. v. Wilson, 694 S.W.3d 186, 193 (Tex. 2024)
(“We generally accord relief to litigants not on form, after all, but on substance[.]”); Brumley v.
McDuff, 616 S.W.3d 826, 833 (Tex. 2021) (“In short, we examine the substance of a plaintiff’s
petition—not its form—to determine whether it states a trespass-to-try title action.”).
27
Harris Methodist Fort Worth v. Ollie, 342 S.W.3d 525, 527 (Tex. 2011).
28
See TEX. R. CIV. P. 355(c)(2)(A) (providing for notice of removal “within 30 days after the
date the party requesting removal of the action discovered, or reasonably should have discovered,
facts establishing the business court’s authority to hear the action”).
29
TEX. GOV’T CODE § 25A.0041(a).

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/s/ Scott A. Brister
Scott A. Brister
Chief Justice

Before Chief Justice Brister and Justices Field and Farris.

9