§ 73.053.Definition

A definition with one significant exclusion.

"Person" means an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, association, joint venture, or other legal or commercial entity. The term does not include a government or governmental subdivision, agency, or instrumentality.

Entities are included, which matters because a corporation can be defamed — a false statement about a company's solvency or business practices injures it as a statement about an individual would.

The governmental exclusion reflects settled principle. A government cannot maintain a defamation action. Criticism of government is the speech the First Amendment most clearly protects, and allowing a public body to sue its critics for libel would be incompatible with that.

The exclusion here is from this subchapter rather than a general statement of that principle, but it aligns with it. Individual officials are not excluded — a mayor defamed personally is a "person" — and they sue subject to the constitutional actual malice standard that applies to public officials.

The definition governs only the Defamation Mitigation Act, so the libel subchapter's own provisions are unaffected by it.