§ 101.029.Liability for Certain Conduct of State Prison Inmates

An extension of the waiver to a person who is not an employee at all.

The Department of Criminal Justice is liable for property damage, personal injury, and death proximately caused by the wrongful act or omission or the negligence of an inmate or state jail defendant housed in its facility, if three conditions are met.

First, the harm arises from the operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle or motor-driven equipment — the same limitation as the general waiver. Second, the inmate would be personally liable were they a private person in similar circumstances. Third, the act was committed in the course and scope of a task the inmate performed at the request of a department employee and under the department's control or supervision.

The third condition is what makes the liability fair. Inmates work on road crews and maintenance details at the department's direction, and an inmate driving equipment at an officer's instruction is functionally doing the department's work.

Subsection (b) forbids naming the inmate as a codefendant in an action under the section. Subsection (c) makes the preclusion mutual: a judgment or settlement against the department bars any action on the same subject matter against the inmate, and a judgment or settlement against the inmate bars any action against the department.

The claimant chooses one, once — the same structure as the Act's election of remedies.

Subsection (d) excludes the obvious case: the section does not apply to harm sustained by an inmate or state jail defendant. It protects the public from inmate work crews, not inmates from each other.