§ 101.023.Limitation on Amount of Liability

The damages caps, and there are four tiers.

State government: $250,000 for each person and $500,000 for each single occurrence for bodily injury or death, and $100,000 for each single occurrence for injury to or destruction of property.

A unit of local government: $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for bodily injury or death, and $100,000 per occurrence for property.

A municipality: $250,000 per person and $500,000 per occurrence for bodily injury or death, and $100,000 per occurrence for property — the state's figures rather than the local government ones.

An emergency service organization: $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence, and $100,000 for property, except as provided by Section 78.001.

The per-occurrence limit is the one that bites in a serious case. A collision injuring four people against a county caps at $300,000 for all of them together, however severe the injuries — and the per-person figure then operates as a ceiling within that.

Municipalities being placed with the state rather than with other local governments is worth noting; a claim against a city is worth up to two and a half times one against a county on the same facts.

These caps take priority over the medical liability chapter, which expressly yields to this section — so a claim against a public hospital is limited by these figures rather than by that chapter's.

The figures are not indexed to inflation and have not moved in decades.