§ 130.005.Application of Chapter

A limiting provision confirming what the chapter does not reach.

This chapter does not apply to an agreement in which an architect, engineer, or land surveyor — or their agent, servant, or employee — is indemnified from liability for: (1) negligent acts other than those described by this chapter; or (2) negligent acts of the contractor, any subcontractor, any person directly or indirectly employed by them, or any person for whose acts they may be liable.

The distinction the chapter draws is between indemnifying someone for their own fault and for another’s. The first is what the void provisions target; the second is ordinary risk allocation and stays enforceable.

So a design professional may be indemnified against the contractor’s negligence. That is a sensible arrangement: a designer named as a defendant because something went wrong during construction it had no part in should be able to look to the party responsible.

The second category is drawn as widely as the construction chain runs — the contractor, subcontractors, anyone directly or indirectly employed by them, and anyone for whose acts they are answerable.

The first category is the residual one, covering negligent acts the chapter does not describe. The void provisions are specific about what they reach — design defects, the professional’s own negligence, the owner’s negligence — and indemnity for anything outside those descriptions is unaffected.

Read with the whole chapter, the scheme is coherent: you may not contract out of responsibility for your own fault, and you may contract for protection against everyone else’s.