§ 137.005.Limitation on Liability

The liability protection, and it covers three different situations.

An attending physician, health or residential care provider, or person acting under their control is not subject to criminal or civil liability and has not engaged in professional misconduct for an act or omission done in good faith under the terms of a declaration.

All three exposures are addressed at once — criminal, civil, and disciplinary — which matters because a mental health treatment decision can attract all three.

"In good faith" is the condition, and it is the only one. A provider who follows a declaration in good faith is protected even where the reading turns out to be wrong.

Without such a provision the chapter would not work. A declaration refusing a medication a physician believes is needed puts that physician in an impossible position, and protection is what allows the document to be followed.

Subsection (b) protects against a misconduct finding in two further situations, and note that it covers professional misconduct only — not civil or criminal liability.

First, failing to follow a declaration where the provider was not given a copy and had no knowledge of it after a good faith attempt to learn whether one existed.

The attempt is required. Ignorance protects a provider who looked and found nothing, not one who never asked.

Second, acting under a declaration after it has expired or been revoked, where the provider does not know.

That protection is necessary given how revocation works. A principal may revoke by acting in a manner demonstrating intent to revoke, which a provider may not witness or recognise.