§ 140B.051.Definitions

Five definitions. Two of them are what separate this subchapter from its counterpart in the trafficking racketeering chapter.

A "civil investigative demand" is any demand issued by the attorney general or a local prosecutor under the subchapter, and a "racketeering investigation" is an inquiry conducted by either of them into whether a person is or has been engaged in or is actively preparing to engage in qualifying activity.

Every felony prosecutor in Texas can therefore compel documents and testimony before filing anything. In the older chapter that power belongs to one statewide office; here it belongs to more than 150 county offices as well.

A "racketeering violation" means conduct constituting an offense under Section 72.02, 72.03, or 72.04, Penal Code — using or investing racketeering proceeds, acquiring an interest in property or control of an enterprise, and participating in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering or the collection of an unlawful debt.

Each of those requires a pattern or an unlawful debt, so the conduct under investigation is by definition repeated rather than isolated — which is part of why pre-suit process is thought necessary.

"Documentary material" and "product of discovery" carry the same wide definitions used in the older chapter: more than thirty categories of record including data compilations and the instructions needed to read them, and material obtained through discovery in any adversarial proceeding along with any analysis or index built on it.

One definition is absent here. The trafficking chapter defines "person" by reference to the Code Construction Act; this subchapter leaves the word to its ordinary statutory meaning.