§ 98.004.Cause of Action Cumulative

One sentence preserving every other route to recovery: the cause of action created by this chapter is cumulative of any other remedy provided by common law or statute.

Trafficking conduct almost never supports only one claim. It typically involves false imprisonment, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, and unpaid wages, each of which is independently actionable.

The overlapping statutory claims matter more. The compelled prostitution chapter covers much of the same ground with its own damages provision; the intimate visual material chapter reaches images produced during the trafficking; and the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act supplies a parallel civil remedy with its own attorney’s fee provision.

Pleading several is a practical necessity, not duplication. Each claim carries its own limitations period, its own elements, and its own measure of damages, and a victim whose trafficking claim fails on one element may recover on another.

Limitations is the clearest example. The sexual offences provision in the limitations chapter gives thirty years for trafficking conduct against a child and five for the adult offences, while the ordinary claims that accompany it run on two.

The chapter’s own remedies are already substantial — damages, exemplary damages, joint and several liability, shareholder and member liability, and a confidential identity — so this provision is about what lies outside rather than about any gap within.

The same cumulative formula appears in the neighbouring chapters, and the compelled prostitution chapter is the one most likely to be pleaded alongside this one.