§ 34.066.Improper Sale

A liability rule for a defective sale, and it is short because the substantive requirements live elsewhere.

The officer shall be liable only for actual damages sustained by the injured party where the officer sells property without giving notice as required by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure or sells property in a manner other than that prescribed by this chapter and the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.

Two failures are covered, and they are different in kind. Failing to give notice is an omission before the sale; selling in an improper manner is a defect in how it was conducted.

Notice is what produces bidders, and its absence usually shows up in the price — which is how damages from a notice failure are measured in practice.

The manner requirements come from this chapter and from the rules together: the first Tuesday timing, the designated place, separate offering of city lots, the debtor’s right to divide rural land, and the rules’ own procedures for advertising and conducting the sale.

The injured party has the burden to prove that the sale was improper and any actual damages suffered.

Both halves have to be proved, and the second is the harder one. Establishing that notice was defective is a matter of record; establishing what the property would have fetched had the sale been proper requires evidence about a sale that never happened.

"Only for actual damages" repeats the chapter’s pattern, and it means an improper sale supports compensation rather than a penalty.

Note who may claim: "the injured party". That can be the debtor, whose property sold for too little, or the creditor, whose judgment went unsatisfied — the section does not confine it to either.