§ 140B.109.Other Relief Available to Attorney General

The attorney general’s own action, and the one place in the chapter where they need no local consent.

Subsection (a) permits an action against a person who engages in conduct constituting an offense under Section 72.02, 72.03, or 72.04, Penal Code, for injunctive relief, a civil penalty, and reasonable attorney’s fees and reasonably incurred costs of investigation or litigation.

Subsection (b) sets the penalty ceilings: $100,000 if the defendant is an individual, $1 million if the defendant is not.

A tenfold difference, and it is a per-defendant cap rather than a per-act one. The trafficking racketeering chapter takes the opposite approach — $250,000 for each separately alleged and proven act, with no ceiling on the total.

The distinction between an individual and an entity is the significant drafting choice. A penalty that would end a person is small against a company, and a single figure for both would be either trivial or ruinous depending on who was sued.

Subsection (c) directs the money in two different ways. The civil penalty goes to the general revenue fund. The attorney’s fees and costs go to the attorney general law enforcement account, which may be used to investigate and enforce this chapter.

That split answers an obvious objection. The office keeps what it spent, and the penalty — the part that scales with the seriousness of the conduct — goes to general revenue, so enforcement intensity is not tied to the office’s own budget.

Subsection (d) provides for settlement. Any party may petition for a consent decree or approval of a settlement agreement, which must specify the alleged violations, the future obligations of the parties, the relief agreed on, and the reasons for entering into it.

The reasons requirement is what makes the settlement public in substance, not only in form.