Trial is just around the corner and you’re feeling confident. You have critical text messages that demonstrate your opponent’s theory of the case is not to be believed. You have a witness lined up to authenticate the messages and explain their meaning, namely your party opponent. But before the start of trial, the court grants your opponent’s motion in limine on relevancy grounds. The evidence is not coming in. The case you were excited to try has just become unwinnable. What do you do?

You can’t file an interlocutory appeal because limine rulings don’t qualify. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem Code § 51.014 (statutorily-authorized interlocutory appeals). You can’t mandamus your judge because mandamus is only available when there is no adequate remedy by appeal. In this situation, you can re-offer the evidence at trial, and if the court rules it excluded, you have a remedy by appeal, that is, if you properly preserve error. See Reveal v. West, 764 S.W.2d 8, 10 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1988, no writ) (mandamus unavailable in limine context). And that brings us to the point of this article, mastering the offer of proof.