Rule 75.Venue requirements

Rule 75 starts from a permissive baseline: a civil case may be filed, tried, and decided in any Indiana court, in any county. Nobody has to prove upfront that they picked the “right” county. That baseline shifts only if a defendant objects — by a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(B)(3) or a similar pleading — and shows that the chosen county does not qualify as a county of “preferred venue.” If the objection succeeds, the court must transfer the case to a county the objecting party selects, so long as that county qualifies under the rule and is authorized to hear the case.

Section (A) lists ten categories that qualify as preferred venue, and none of them outranks the others — a case can rightly sit in more than one preferred county at once. The categories track where the dispute is centered: the county where most individual defendants live (or where any one does, if there’s no majority); the county where land or personal property tied to the claim sits; the county where a vehicle accident happened; the county tied to a defendant organization’s office; the county tied to a governmental defendant, favoring the plaintiff’s residence; a county the parties fixed by written agreement before the transfer motion is decided; the county where a restrained or custodied person is held; a county set by another statute creating a special proceeding; the county where property sits in an in-rem case served by publication; and, as a catch-all, the plaintiff’s county when none of the other nine categories fits or every defendant is a nonresident without an Indiana office. A party has to raise the venue objection within the time Rules 6 and 12 allow, or lose the point.

Section (B) covers a narrower problem — a case filed in the wrong court altogether, not just the wrong county. The court does not dismiss; it transfers the case, and the case keeps its original filing date for purposes like a statute of limitations. But the party who filed has twenty days to pay the transfer costs, or the original court dismisses the case without prejudice and orders that party to pay the objecting party’s reasonable attorney fees. Section (C) covers cost-shifting more broadly: whoever loses a venue fight under this rule, or under Rule 21(B), pays the refiling costs and the mileage the other side spent resisting venue, and if the case was filed in the wrong county through a sham pleading, bad faith, or no real reason at all, that party also owes the winning side’s attorney fees.

The last two sections round out the rule. Section (D) makes Rule 75 override any other venue statute — a stricter statutory venue requirement gives way to this rule, and a venue defect is never treated as a defect in the court’s underlying authority to hear the case. Section (E) lets either side appeal a ruling on transfer right away, before the rest of the case is resolved, though the appeal does not pause the trial court proceedings unless a court orders otherwise.