§ 86.003.Derivative Claims

The provision that stops the bar being circumvented by a family member.

The bar applies to a claim by a claimant other than a convicted person if both of two conditions hold: the claimant’s right to recovery results from an injury to a convicted person — including a claim for the wrongful death of that person or for loss of consortium with or loss of the companionship of them — and the convicted person’s right to recovery would be barred.

Both conditions are required, and the second does the analytical work. The derivative claim rises or falls with the underlying one, so the court asks whether the convicted person could have recovered had they brought the claim themselves.

Wrongful death is the case the section was written for. Someone killed while committing a felony has no claim of their own to bring, and without this provision the bar would apply only where the person survived — an outcome depending on nothing but whether they lived.

Loss of consortium and loss of companionship are the other named derivatives, brought by a spouse, parent, or child whose relationship was harmed by an injury to someone else.

"Results from an injury to a convicted person" is the test, and it is broader than the two named examples — any claim whose existence depends on that injury is within it.

The logic is that a derivative claim is derivative. It exists only because of an injury to another person, and it cannot be worth more than the claim it derives from.

The applicability provision sets the outer boundary of the whole chapter, and the traffic-violation exclusion removes a category of offence the Legislature thought too minor to carry this consequence.