Texas Business Court Decisions – July 16, 2025
No. 24-BC01B-0010 Primexx Energy Opportunity Fund, LP, et al. v. Primexx Energy Corporation, et al. (First Division, Judge Whitehill) 24-BC01b-0010-primexx-energy-opportunity-fund-v-primexx-energy-corporation-2025-tex-bus-26.pdf
Civil case – Personal Jurisdiction. For the court’s prior decisions in the case, see 2025 Tex. Bus. 5; 2025 Tex. Bus. 9; 2025 Tex. Bus. 13, and 2025 Tex. Bus. 21. Counsel for Acconcia and Blackstone filed special appearances (Acconcia was named in the original petition, while Blackstone was named in plaintiffs’ first amended petition); the court granted the special appearances and dismissed Acconcia and Blackstone; plaintiffs then filed a second amended petition; after a partial summary judgment was entered for defendants, plaintiff dismissed its remaining claims for a tolling agreement while the parties appeal the court’s previous rulings, including the grant of the special appearances, which the parties deemed to apply to the second amended petition.
Held: Considering the allegations in the second amended complaint and the opposition evidence concerning the special appearances:
(1) the court’s specific jurisdictional analysis should concern only the claims that survived the partial summary judgment order;
(2) the court lacks personal jurisdiction over Acconcia because: (a) plaintiffs do not allege, argue or adduce evidence that Acconcia committed a tortious act in whole or in part in Texas that would support personal – meaning direct – liability against him; instead they seek to impute others’ conduct to him, which imputation is improper; (b) personal jurisdiction cannot be based on Acconcia’s membership of Primexx’s board as his contacts with Texas are not substantially connected with the operative facts of either the surviving claims or all asserted claims; and (c) he had no connection with the sale of the asset in question, and while he may have been in Texas on two occasions, potentially on Primexx business, there was no evidence he took any actions related to the asset’s sale or did anything that would be independently tortious as to plaintiffs;
(3) plaintiffs failed to establish personal jurisdiction over defendant Blackstone in that: (a) any action Blackstone took to raise capital to invest in Primexx was not sufficiently connected to the operative facts of the suit, and plaintiffs’ argument is contradicted by their own pleadings; (b) claims that the court has jurisdiction because Acconcia was Blackstone’s agent fail for the reasons stated above, and because any actions he took were on behalf of two other entities rather than Blackstone; (c) the proceeds Blackstone allegedly received from the sale of the asset were fungible assets which do not support jurisdiction (rather than Texas real estate, which may); (d) the evidence does not establish plaintiffs’ alter ego allegations; and (d) Blackstone did not waive its special appearance as it did not invoke the court’s judgment on any question other than the court’s jurisdiction, did not recognize that this action is properly pending, or seek affirmative action on a non-jurisdictional issue.
No. 24-BC01A-002 BP Energy Company v. Cox (First Division, Judge Bouressa) 24-bc01a-0002-bp-energy-company-v-cox-2025-tex-bus-27.pdf
Civil case – Jurisdiction. The court accepts the parties’ mutual representations that the action does not meet the jurisdictional requirements of Texas Government Code 25A.004(d)(1), and the court transfer the case to the district court in Potter County, Texas.