§ 74.004.Exception from Certain Laws

A carve-out from the DTPA, and it is confined to one category of claim.

Notwithstanding any other law, the DTPA provisions in Sections 17.41 through 17.63 of the Business & Commerce Code do not apply to physicians or health care providers with respect to claims for damages for personal injury or death resulting, or alleged to have resulted, from negligence.

The DTPA offers treble damages, its own fee provision, and a lower burden than negligence. Without this exclusion, every malpractice claim would be repleaded as a deceptive practice, and the chapter's caps and expert report requirement would be avoided wholesale.

The limits are worth reading. The exemption covers claims for personal injury or death resulting from negligence. A DTPA claim about billing practices, or about a misrepresentation causing economic loss rather than bodily injury, is not clearly within it.

Subsection (b): this section does not apply to pharmacists. Pharmacists remain subject to the DTPA, which fits the chapter's own definition — a pharmacist is a health care provider only for claims arising from dispensing prescription medicines, and other causes of action against them, including product claims, are preserved.

Note that the arbitration agreement section makes a violation by a non-physician provider a deceptive act notwithstanding this section.