§ 147.005.Duty or Action Not Created

Two sentences settling what kind of statute this is.

Subsection (a): this chapter does not create a duty. Subsection (b): this chapter does not create a cause of action.

Both were worth saying, and they answer different arguments.

The no-duty provision is the more consequential. The chapter refers repeatedly to failures to detect, disclose, prevent, report, correct, cure or remediate — language that reads like a description of obligations. Subsection (a) confirms it is not.

So a vendor was under no statutory duty to identify date failures in its products, tell customers, or fix them. Whether any duty existed was answered by contract, warranty, and the general law of negligence.

The no-cause-of-action provision forecloses the mirror argument — that a claimant could sue for violation of the chapter itself.

Read together, the chapter is entirely defensive. Every provision limits, conditions, or defends against claims arising under other law: notice before suit, an inspection right, a settlement offer with cost consequences, two affirmative defences, evidentiary exclusions, repose, and damages caps.

Nothing in it helps a claimant, and that was the point of the legislation.

The same formula appears through this part of the code, in the pandemic liability, food consumption, negligent hiring and wellness program chapters.