§ 72.001.Limited Liability

Texas's surviving guest statute, and it is now confined to family members.

A person who is related to the owner or operator within the second degree by consanguinity or affinity, and who is transported as a guest without payment, has a cause of action for injury, death, or loss in a collision only if the collision was intentional on the part of the owner or operator or was caused by heedlessness or reckless disregard of the rights of others.

Ordinary negligence gives no claim. A family member injured through a relative's carelessness recovers nothing under this section.

Guest statutes were once common and applied to every non-paying passenger. Their purpose was to prevent collusive claims — a driver and passenger who are friends have little reason to contest liability when an insurer will pay.

Texas narrowed the rule to relatives within the second degree, which is where the collusion concern is strongest and where the ordinary adversarial relationship between claimant and defendant is weakest.

The second degree by consanguinity or affinity, as the Government Code defines it, reaches parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and the equivalent relations by marriage.

The next section confirms the limit's edge: there is no limitation on the liability of an owner or operator who is not related to the guest within that degree. An unrelated passenger recovers on ordinary negligence.