§ 147.046.Failure to Give Notice

The enforcement provision, and it is graduated rather than immediately fatal.

Subsection (a): on the defendant’s motion that the claimant did not give notice, the court shall: abate the action; and require the claimant to give the notice before the 31st day after the date of the order of abatement.

Both are mandatory, and the sequence matters. Abatement suspends the case; it does not end it.

Subsection (b) supplies the consequence of not curing: the court shall dismiss the action if the claimant does not give notice within the 31 days.

So the failure is curable, and the chapter says how. That is a notably gentler design than several comparable gates in this code — the medical liability expert report and the certificate of merit both produce dismissal directly, with no opportunity to supply what was missing.

The difference reflects what the requirement is for. An expert report tests whether a claim has merit; this notice tests nothing. It exists so the defendant can inspect and offer to settle, and both remain possible after an abatement.

The motion is the trigger, so a defendant who does not raise the point loses the benefit. Nothing requires the court to act on its own.

The section does not say dismissal is with prejudice, which leaves the ordinary consequences — and the limitations period, which continues to run throughout.