§ 73.059.Effect of Correction, Clarification, or Retraction

The reward for correcting, and it is the incentive the whole Act rests on.

If a correction, clarification, or retraction is made in accordance with this subchapter — regardless of whether the person claiming harm made a request — a person may not recover exemplary damages unless the publication was made with actual malice.

"Regardless of whether a request was made" is deliberate. A publisher who discovers its own error and corrects it, unprompted, gets the same protection as one that responds to a demand. The Act rewards the correction, not the response.

The actual malice exception preserves the punitive claim where it belongs. A publisher who knew the statement was false, or published with reckless disregard for the truth, cannot buy off exemplary damages with a retraction.

What is barred is exemplary damages alone. Actual damages remain fully recoverable — a correction limits the punitive exposure and does not extinguish the claim.

Read across the subchapter, exemplary damages are lost in three ways: not requesting a correction within 90 days of learning of the publication; failing without good cause to disclose evidence of falsity; and the publisher making a proper correction. All three point the same way, and none touches actual damages.