§ 61.005.Certain Torts and Unliquidated Demands

A saving clause, and its condition is the important half.

Nothing in this chapter prevents issuance of a writ of attachment in a suit founded in tort or on an unliquidated demand against an individual, partnership, association, or corporation on whom personal service cannot be obtained in this state.

The problem it addresses comes from the chapter’s own language. The general grounds speak of a defendant justly indebted and of the amount of the demand, which reads naturally as a liquidated money debt.

That reading would put tort claims outside the chapter entirely. A person injured by a defendant about to leave the state with their assets would have no pre-judgment remedy at all.

The section removes the objection rather than creating a new ground. The general and specific grounds still apply; what it settles is that the nature of the claim is not itself a bar.

The condition confines it sharply: a defendant on whom personal service cannot be obtained in this state.

So this is not a general tort attachment provision. A local tortfeasor who can be served is outside it, however unliquidated the claim.

The condition matches the underlying concern. A defendant beyond the reach of Texas process is one against whom a judgment may be hard to obtain and harder to enforce, and their property here may be all there is.

Four kinds of defendant are named — individual, partnership, association, corporation — which covers the forms in which a defendant might be organised.

The child sexual assault provision is the chapter’s other route for a tort claim, and it operates on entirely different terms.