Beware: "Absence From This State" May Not Really Toll Limitations After All.

Familiar to most Texas practitioners is the rule of Section 16.063 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code:

The absence from this state of a person against whom a cause of action may be maintained suspends the running of the applicable statute of limitations for the period of the person's absence.

One might assume that this statute means precisely what it says—that the running of limitations is tolled against a defendant while that defendant is absent from Texas. But courts have increasingly found occasions to refuse to construe it so plainly.

Nonresidents

In 2008, the Texas Supreme Court held that the tolling statute does not apply to nonresidents who are amenable to service of process under the long-arm statute.¹ The court theorized that if a defendant is capable of being served, it is "present" in Texas for purposes of the statute.