§ 9.002.Applicability

The scope provision, and it is narrower than the chapter’s title suggests.

Subsection (a) covers two categories. Claims for damages for personal injury, property damage, or death, regardless of the legal theories or statutes relied on — including intentional conduct, negligence, strict tort liability, products liability, or breach of warranty. And claims for damages other than for personal injury, property damage, or death resulting from any tortious conduct, including libel, slander, or tortious interference.

Read together, that is tort litigation and nothing else. A contract suit seeking only contract damages falls outside the chapter, however groundless the pleading.

"Regardless of the legal theories or statutes" prevents the obvious evasion — pleading a tort claim under a statutory label to escape the chapter.

Subsection (b) names ten kinds of party the chapter reaches, from a county and a municipality through public school and junior college districts, charitable and nonprofit organizations, hospital districts and authorities, any other political subdivision, and the State of Texas.

Listing them was necessary because governmental entities are ordinarily exempt from cost-shifting provisions. Here the state and its subdivisions are subject to sanctions on the same terms as anyone else, and can seek them.

Subsection (c) is a priority rule: in an action to which the chapter applies, its provisions prevail over all other law to the extent of any conflict.

That clause reads more strongly than the chapter operates, because the sanction section then steps aside wherever the later chapter or Rule 13 applies.