Does Texas Have a Good Samaritan Law? Limits and Overdose Rule

Yes, Texas has a Good Samaritan law. It lives mainly in Section 74.151 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and it protects anyone who provides emergency care in good faith from civil liability, so long as the help was not willfully or wantonly negligent.¹ A separate provision in the Health and Safety Code adds a limited defense for people who call 911 during a drug overdose.

What the Law Actually Protects You From

Section 74.151 is short and blunt. If you administer emergency care in good faith, you are not liable for civil damages unless your conduct rises to willful or wanton negligence.¹ The shield is against lawsuits, not against criminal charges, and it kicks in at the scene of an emergency: a highway wreck, a choking incident in a restaurant, someone collapsing in a park.

“Good faith” is the phrase doing the work. It means you genuinely intended to help and were not acting with an ulterior motive or reckless indifference to the person’s safety. An honest mistake, poor technique, or a bad outcome despite your best effort will not strip the protection. Conduct that shows conscious disregard for the person you are trying to help will.

Who Is Covered

You do not need medical training. Perform CPR on a stranger, apply pressure to a wound, pull someone from a burning car — the statute treats you the same as anyone else acting in good faith at the scene.

Two groups are named specifically in the statute:

Anyone using an automated external defibrillator during an emergency. A federal law, the Cardiac Arrest Survival Act of 2000, adds a second layer of protection for AED users and the businesses that make AEDs available, unless the harm results from willful misconduct or gross negligence.¹²
Volunteer first responders as defined under Section 421.095 of the Government Code, when they provide emergency care.¹

Off-duty doctors and nurses are covered too. A physician who stops at a highway accident is acting as a volunteer, and the statute explicitly protects volunteer physicians and health care providers who deliver emergency services at accident scenes or in ambulances, shielded unless they acted with willful, wanton, or reckless disregard for the patient’s safety.¹

When the Shield Does Not Apply

Two situations knock the protection out.

Willful or Wanton Negligence

Every emergency care protection in Chapter 74 draws the same line: honest mistakes are covered, reckless conduct is not.¹ Texas defines gross negligence as conduct involving an extreme degree of risk where the actor is subjectively aware of that risk and proceeds anyway with conscious indifference to the safety of others.³ It is not enough that a reasonable person would have seen the danger. The helper must have personally recognized the risk and pushed past it. Proving that in a fast-moving emergency is difficult, which is why claims against Good Samaritans rarely succeed.

Paid Care

The general protection is built around voluntary aid. If you are being paid to provide the care, the ordinary rules of negligence apply instead of the heightened willful-and-wanton standard, because you are acting in a professional capacity rather than as a bystander who stepped in.

Texas Does Not Require You to Help

The Good Samaritan law protects you if you choose to help. It does not require you to help. There is no general duty-to-rescue statute in Texas. You can walk past someone in medical distress without calling 911 and face no criminal charge for doing nothing. Only a handful of states impose a bystander duty to assist, and Texas is not among them. The point of the law is to remove a barrier for people who want to step in, not to create an obligation.

The Separate Rule for Drug Overdoses

Texas has a different Good Samaritan provision aimed at overdoses, tucked into the Health and Safety Code. Under Section 483.041, a person who calls 911 to report a suspected overdose can raise a defense to prosecution for possession of a dangerous drug, which is normally a Class A misdemeanor.⁴

To use the defense, all three of these must be true:

You were the first person to request emergency medical assistance for the overdose during an ongoing medical emergency.
You stayed at the location until medical help arrived.
You cooperated with emergency medical and law enforcement personnel.

The same defense is available to the overdose victim if someone else called 911 for them.⁴

The Overdose Defense Has Real Gaps

The defense disappears in several common situations:⁴

You have a prior conviction or deferred adjudication for a drug offense under Chapters 481, 483, or 485 of the Health and Safety Code.
You called 911 for an overdose at any point during the 18 months before the current incident.
A police officer was already in the process of arresting you or executing a search warrant when you called.
You have previously been acquitted using this defense.

Those restrictions narrow the law considerably. A person with any prior drug conviction who witnesses a friend overdosing still faces potential prosecution for calling 911. The provision also covers only dangerous drug possession under Chapter 483; parallel provisions exist in Chapter 481 for controlled substance offenses, with their own limitations.⁴

Giving Someone Naloxone

Section 483.106 provides separate immunity for administering an opioid antagonist such as naloxone (Narcan) to someone experiencing a suspected overdose.⁴ Naloxone is available without a prescription in Texas, and the state’s access law provides criminal, civil, and professional immunity for distributing and administering it in good faith. If you carry naloxone and use it on someone you believe is overdosing, the law protects that action.

1
State of Texas. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code 74.151 – Liability for Emergency Care
2
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Public Law 106-505 – Cardiac Arrest Survival Act of 2000
3
State of Texas. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code 41.001 – Definitions
4
State of Texas. Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 483 – Dangerous Drugs