§ 71.002.Cause of Action

The cause of action itself, and its central formula is one nineteenth-century phrase repeated throughout.

The general rule: a person is liable for damages arising from an injury causing death if the injury was caused by the person's or his agent's or servant's wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default.

Five words covering the whole range of fault, and they are broader than "negligence" alone. "Unskillfulness" reaches an incompetent performance; "default" reaches a failure to act.

Three further branches address transport and industry, and their specificity dates the statute. Liability attaches to a proprietor, owner, charterer, or hirer of an industrial or public utility plant, a railroad, street railway, steamboat, stagecoach, or other vehicle for the transportation of goods or passengers, on the same fault formula.

And to a receiver, trustee, or other person in charge of such an operation — for their own fault, for a servant's or agent's fault (adding "unfitness" to the list), or for a bad or unsafe condition of the railroad, street railway, or other machinery under their control.

The final branch is a substitution rule: a person in charge is liable if the action could have been brought against the owner had the owner been acting as operator. Whoever runs the operation answers as the owner would.

The enumerated categories were the significant employers and carriers of the 1860s, and the section has kept its original shape while the general branch does most of the modern work.