§ 86.002.Recovery of Damages for Injury to Convicted Person Prohibited

The operative bar, and its causation test is strict.

A claimant who has been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor may not recover damages for an injury sustained during the commission of the offence if the injury would not have been sustained but for the commission of it.

Two conditions. The injury must have been sustained during the offence, and it must satisfy a but-for test — an injury the claimant would have suffered anyway is not barred.

The exception in subsection (b) requires both of two things.

First, the damages must arise from an act entirely separate from any act intended to result in preventing the offence or apprehending the claimant during or immediately after it. "Entirely separate" is a demanding phrase — force used to stop or catch the person is not separate, however excessive it might otherwise appear.

Second, the damages must not arise from a premises defect or other circumstance the claimant was exposed to as a result of committing the offence. A burglar who falls through a rotten floor was exposed to that floor by burgling the building.

The applicability section preserves a claim where the owner's conduct was grossly negligent or intentional, other than conduct justified under the Penal Code's force provisions — which is the limit on how far this bar reaches.