§ 85.002.Liability

The operative liability provision, and it is deliberately spare.

A defendant is liable, as provided by this chapter, to a claimant for damages arising from stalking of the claimant by the defendant.

"As provided by this chapter" carries the whole of the content. This section creates the claim; the proof provision states what must be established, the damages provision states what can be recovered, and the defence provision states what defeats it.

The significance is that stalking becomes a civil wrong in its own right. Before the chapter, a stalking victim had to fit the conduct into an existing tort — intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, invasion of privacy — each of which requires elements a course of surveillance and following may not supply.

A defendant who never touched the claimant, never threatened them in terms, and never entered their property could be difficult to sue at all.

The civil claim is independent of any prosecution. Stalking is a criminal offence in Texas, and the proof provision keys the civil claim to conduct constituting that offence — but it says expressly that a conviction is not required.

That matters because criminal stalking cases are hard to charge and harder to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and a victim whose complaint went nowhere with the police is not thereby left without a remedy.

The claim is also cumulative, so it sits alongside whatever other causes of action the same conduct supports rather than replacing them.