§ 90.008.Voluntary Dismissal

An exit route, and it preserves the claim.

Before serving a report, a claimant seeking damages arising from an asbestos- or silica-related injury may voluntarily dismiss the action, and that dismissal is without prejudice to the right to file a subsequent action.

The provision matters because of how these diseases behave. A claimant with documented exposure and early findings may not meet the impairment criteria today and may meet them in five years. Litigating to a dismissal accomplishes nothing; withdrawing and returning when the criteria are met is the sensible course.

The timing condition — before serving a report — is what makes this distinct from the dismissal provision, which operates after a report was due and not properly served.

The MDL section ties the two together. A claimant in an action pending in the MDL pretrial court who voluntarily dismisses under this section gets the benefit of the chapter and of the limitations provision for asbestos and silica claims in a later action, on the same terms as a claimant dismissed by the court.

The design across these three sections is consistent: a claim that does not meet the medical criteria is deferred rather than destroyed. That is the trade the 2005 legislation made — strict criteria in exchange for the claim surviving until the disease does.