§ 83.001.Civil Immunity

One sentence linking the criminal justification defences to civil immunity.

A defendant who uses force or deadly force that is justified under Chapter 9, Penal Code, is immune from civil liability for personal injury or death that results from that use of force.

Chapter 9 of the Penal Code is where Texas justification law lives — self-defence, defence of a third person, defence of property, and the provisions on the use of deadly force including the circumstances in which a person has no duty to retreat.

The 2007 amendment that produced the current wording came with the legislation that broadened those criminal provisions, and this section carries the broadened justification straight into civil law.

The protection is immunity rather than a defence, which is the stronger form — the claim should not proceed rather than being defeated at trial.

The test is entirely the Penal Code's. This section adds no standard of its own; whether the force was justified is answered by that chapter, and the civil consequence follows automatically.

No criminal proceeding is required. The section turns on whether the use of force was justified, not on whether anyone was prosecuted, acquitted, or no-billed — so the civil court decides the question if no criminal court has.

The trespasser provision in the recreational use chapter contains a parallel rule for landowners, and the nuclear plant chapter supplies an affirmative defence on the same basis.