Texas Legislature Rejects SB 30, Preserving Full Damage Recovery Rights for Injury Victims

The Texas legislature has declined to pass SB 30, a bill that would have imposed significant limitations on payouts for personal injury and wrongful death claims. Introduced in 2025, the proposed legislation sought to reduce the amount of compensation plaintiffs could receive following lawsuits involving car accidents, work-related incidents, premises liability claims, and wrongful deaths.

Supporters of SB 30 framed the legislation as a necessary tort reform measure aimed at preventing what they characterized as runaway lawsuits. They argued the bill would address concerns about excessive litigation costs and protect businesses from what they termed nuclear verdicts. However, statistical evidence presented during legislative proceedings revealed that only 4.6% of all verdicts in Texas between 2021 and 2025 exceeded $10 million, challenging the narrative that such high-value awards were commonplace.

Opponents of the legislation viewed SB 30 as fundamentally pro-insurance legislation that would have disproportionately benefited major insurance corporations at the expense of injured individuals. The bill proposed implementing monetary caps on recoverable damages and would have restricted plaintiffs' ability to present evidence related to emotional anguish, damage to reputation, pain and suffering, and other non-economic damages. During Senate Committee hearings, survivors of injuries and sexual assaults testified about the critical importance of these non-economic damage categories in achieving meaningful compensation.

The failure of SB 30 to advance through the legislative process means that Texas maintains its current system where injured parties can seek damages that fully reflect both economic losses and non-economic harms. This outcome preserves what legal experts consider a cornerstone of the Texas legal system: the ability to pursue comprehensive legal damages against negligent parties. The legislation would have applied limitations across all personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits, not just the highest-profile cases with multimillion-dollar verdicts.

For more information about personal injury legal rights in Texas, visit https://www.culpepperlawgroup.com. The preservation of current damage recovery standards ensures that individuals suffering from injuries can continue to seek compensation that accurately matches the full scope of their losses, both financial and personal. This legislative outcome represents a significant victory for consumer advocacy groups and personal injury attorneys who argued that the proposed caps would have undermined justice for vulnerable populations.