§ 149.006.Scope of Chapter

A choice of law provision, and an unusually assertive one.

The courts of this state shall apply, to the fullest extent permissible under the United States Constitution, this state’s substantive law, including the limitation under this chapter, to the issue of successor asbestos-related liabilities.

The provision exists because these cases are rarely local. A merger completed in one state in 1960, involving a corporation organised in a second, producing exposure in a third, litigated in Texas by a claimant who lives elsewhere — that is the ordinary shape of the dispute.

Without direction, ordinary choice of law analysis might apply another state’s law to successor liability, and most states have no cap. The chapter’s protection would then depend on which law a court selected.

"To the fullest extent permissible under the United States Constitution" is a candid acknowledgement of the limit. A state cannot apply its own law to a dispute with no significant connection to it — due process and full faith and credit constrain the choice.

The Legislature has said: go as far as the Constitution allows, and no further. The boundary is left to the courts, because it cannot be fixed by statute.

"Substantive law" is the operative category, and the section names the cap as an instance of it — which forecloses an argument that a liability limit is procedural and therefore governed by the forum’s own rules regardless.

The provision binds Texas courts, and says nothing about what another state’s court will do with a Texas merger. That question is answered by that forum’s own choice of law rules.