Mule Deer and Forum Selection Clauses
September 3, 2026
The El Chaparral Ranch in Sonora, Mexico, aspires to provide a world-class hunting experience “for anyone in pursuit of trophy mule deer, desert bighorn sheep, or the exclusive Coues deer.” In 2016, the Ranch contracted with Abraham Garcia Marmolejo, a U.S. citizen residing in Texas, to promote and sell hunts at the Ranch. Marmolejo would recruit Texas clients, collect payment, and then wire the money to the Ranch after taking his commission. In that same year, the Ranch and Marmolejo separately entered into a joint venture for the “development, management, and ownership of mule deer genetics, including mule deer embryos, semen, and breeder mule deer bucks and does.”
In early 2024, these business relationships collapsed. Although agents of the Ranch invited Marmolejo to travel to Mexico to work things out, he declined the invitation after learning that these agents had allegedly “planned and plotted to get [him] ‘picked up’ upon arrival by hired guns.” These same agents allegedly (1) made false and defamatory statements about Marmolejo to clients, (2) fabricated a series of criminal charges against Marmolejo in Mexico, (3) flaunted their ability to control the initiation and dismissal of criminal proceedings in Mexico, and (4) sought to assert unilateral control over assets in the United States relating to the joint venture.
In May 2024, Marmolejo sued the Ranch and various individuals associated with it in federal court in Texas (Magistrate Judge Robert Pitman). He sought a temporary restraining order, a permanent injunction, and the emergency appointment of a receiver. The defendants moved to dismiss the case for forum non conveniens based on a Mexican forum selection clause in the parties’ agreement. To resolve this motion, the court had to answer a series of questions. Would enforcing the clause be reasonable under the circumstances? Did the clause survive the termination of the agreement? Was it mandatory? Was it broad enough to encompass the claims asserted by the plaintiff? And could the defendants invoke it? The court ultimately concluded that the answer to each of these questions was “yes” and dismissed the case.
Reasonableness
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that a forum selection clause is not enforceable when the party seeking to avoid enforcement will for all practical purposes be deprived of his day in court due to the grave inconvenience of the selected forum. Marmolejo argued that the clause was unenforceable on this basis because it was unsafe for him to travel to Mexico due to the defendants’ threats of physical violence and fabricated criminal charges. The court disagreed. It held that these threats had all occurred long enough ago—in early 2024—that it was no longer reasonable for Marmolejo to be concerned about litigating the dispute in Mexico:
Garcia Marmolejo makes no allegations that Defendants have threatened him with false criminal charges or physical harm since the parties’ falling out in 2024. Given Garcia Marmolejo alleges no present attempt to manipulate the Mexican court system against him, the undersigned cannot conclude he would be deprived of his day in court if he were forced to litigate this case in Mexico (emphasis added).
In 2025, I published a paper, Dangerous Foreign Courts, that surveyed the law in this area. I argued that while courts will sometimes decline to dismiss a case for forum non conveniens on the ground that it is too dangerous for a plaintiff to litigate abroad, they almost never accept this argument when the plaintiff has previously agreed to litigate in the country via a forum selection clause. While the outcomes in many of these decisions are defensible, the courts sometimes go too far. In a prior blog post, I criticized a decision by a federal court in New York enforcing a forum selection clause choosing the courts in Afghanistan notwithstanding credible allegations that the plaintiff’s agents would be shot if suit was filed there. The mere fact that someone has previously agreed to litigate in a country, I argued, does not mean that the case should be dismissed when there are credible allegations that that person will suffer physical harm if the lawsuit is filed there. This is especially true when the facts on the ground have changed between the time of signing and the time of litigation.
The outcome in Marmolejo v. Rancho Cinegetico el Gran Chaparral II is, however, in broadly in line with the prior decisions in this area. While I am not convinced that threats of physical violence and fabricated criminal charges must be renewed every year to render them credible, the courts have also recognized that a case may also be dismissed, even in the face of credible allegations of danger, if it is possible for the plaintiff to bring the case in another country without having to physically travel there. In Argueta v. Banco Mexicano, S.A. (1996), a case that was not cited in Marmolejo, the Ninth Circuit enforced a Mexican forum selection clause against a plaintiff notwithstanding allegations that the defendant had previously colluded with the police to actually imprison him for a year in Mexico as a means of obtaining certain loan modifications. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that even if the plaintiff had a credible fear of traveling to Mexico, he had failed to “provide any information showing that [his] physical presence in Mexico is required to pursue the civil action.” Since the plaintiff could pursue the case without ever leaving the safety of the United States, the court concluded, there was no danger that enforcing the clause would deprive him of his day in court.
In light of the holding in Argueta and other cases, I suspect that even if the federal district court in Texas had concluded that Marmolejo’s fears about litigating in Mexico were timely and credible, it still would have enforced the forum selection clause and dismissed the case because he could have pursued it in absentia. This is particularly true in light of the fact that he had previously agreed to litigate in Mexico. As discussed above, the courts virtually never recognize danger as a valid basis for not granting a forum non conveniens motion in the face of a contractually valid forum selection clause.
Survival
As a general rule, dispute resolution provisions such as choice-of-law clauses and forum selection clauses do not expire when an agreement is terminated. U.S. courts typically reason that these provisions constitute separate agreements that are distinct and separate from the main contract and that, barring some evidence of contrary party intent, they continue to bind the parties even after the main contract ceases to exist. In light of these decisions, the court in Marmolejo had no problem concluding that the Mexico forum selection clause continued to bind the parties even after the agreement was terminated.
Exclusivity
The court next had to decide whether the clause selected the courts of Mexico to the exclusion of all other courts. Here is the relevant text:
For the interpretation and fulfillment of this contract, as well as for the resolution of any controversy related to it, “THE PARTIES” agree that the clauses of this voluntary agreement and the laws of all the States of the Mexican Republic apply and for everything related thereto, they will submit to the jurisdiction of the courts of the city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, expressly waiving any other forum that for any reason may correspond to them.
The court correctly held that the clause was mandatory because its final phrase—“expressly waiving any other forum”—indicated that the parties intended to litigate their dispute in Mexico and nowhere else.
Scope
Still another question put to the court was whether the forum selection clause swept broadly enough to encompass the claims asserted by Marmolejo. The court held that it did because it contained the words “related to.” The court reasoned that this language indicated that the parties wanted the clause to be “broadly construed and applied to the claim so long as it has a significant relationship to or originates in the contract.” After concluding that all of Marmolejo’s claims had a significant relationship with the contract, the court held that the clause applied to these claims.
Waiver
Finally, Marmolejo also argued that the defendants had waived their right to invoke the Mexican forum selection clause because they had hired U.S. counsel who “made demands and threatened litigation in Texas.” The court rejected this argument. It noted that the plaintiff had failed to point to any prior case law suggesting that “mere threats” to litigate outside the contractually designated forum amounted to a waiver of the right to enforce a forum selection clause. It also noted that the defendants had raised the clause in its earliest motion to dismiss. On this record, the court could not find that the defendants had waived their right to enforce the clause.
Conclusion
This case highlights the challenges faced by plaintiffs seeking to avoid foreign forum selection clauses. Even when the defendant allegedly threatens physical harm and fabricated legal charges, a mandatory forum selection clause in a terminated contract can still bring about a forum non conveniens dismissal. In prior work, I have described the modern forum selection clause as a “battering ram capable of smashing its way to the courts of the chosen state in virtually every case where it is invoked.” There is nothing in the reasoning or outcome of Marmolejo v. Rancho Cinegetico el Gran Chaparral II that suggests otherwise.