Alvarado v. Hyundai Motor Co.

• Decision Date: 09 August 1995
• Docket Number: No. 04-91-00208-CV,04-91-00208-CV
• Parties: Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 14,491 Mario ALVARADO; Fidel Alvarado, Jr.; and Alicia Alvarado, Individually and As Next Friends of Fidel Alvarado, III, a Minor, Appellants, v. HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY; Hyundai Motor America, Inc.; and Port City Hyundai, Inc., Appellees.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 243

908 S.W.2d 243

Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 14,491

Mario ALVARADO; Fidel Alvarado, Jr.; and Alicia Alvarado,

Individually and As Next Friends of Fidel

Alvarado, III, a Minor, Appellants, v. HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY; Hyundai Motor America, Inc.; and Port City Hyundai, Inc., Appellees.

No. 04-91-00208-CV.

Court of Appeals of Texas,

San Antonio.

Aug. 9, 1995.

Rehearing Overruled Sept. 18, 1995.

Steve T. Hastings, Rose Rivera Vela, Allison & Huerta, Corpus Christi, Christa Brown, Austin, for appellants.

Eduardo Roberto Rodriguez, Rodriguez, Colvin & Chaney, L.L.P., Brownsville, Ruth Greenfield Malinas, Frank Montalvo, David M. Prichard, Ball & Weed, P.C., San Antonio, David M. Heilbron, Leslie G. Landau, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, San Francisco, CA, David E. Keltner, Haynes and Boone, L.L.P., Fort Worth, Thomas H. Crofts, Jr., Crofts, Callaway & Jefferson, P.C., San Antonio, Armando X. Lopez, Laredo, Lee Casstevens, Wood, Burney, Cohn & Bradley, Corpus Christi, for appellees.

Before STONE, HARDBERGER and REEVES, ¹ JJ.

OPINION

HARDBERGER, Justice.

This product liability case involving the seat belt design of a Hyundai car raises the question of whether there has been federal preemption of seat belt design. If there has been preemption then a common law negligence or products liability lawsuit is prohibited by the supremacy clause of Article VI of the United States Constitution. The trial judge ruled that there was preemption and granted a partial summary judgment accordingly. This appeal is from that ruling, and this opinion deals solely with the question of preemption.

Procedural History of the Case

Following the trial court's granting of the partial summary judgment, the Plaintiffs took a non-suit. The trial court entered the nonsuit order with prejudice to those claims addressed in the partial summary judgment order. The Alvarados appealed. First, they said they were entitled to take a nonsuit without prejudice because the partial summary judgment was interlocutory and they took it timely. Their second ground of appeal was substantive: that no claims were preempted. This court agreed with the first point and never reached the preemption issue. See Alvarado v. Hyundai Motor Co., 885 S.W.2d 167 (Tex.App.--San Antonio 1994). The Texas Supreme Court reversed, holding that "Once a judge announces a decision that adjudicates a claim, that claim is no longer subject to the plaintiff's right to nonsuit." See Hyundai Motor Co. v. Alvarado, 892 S.W.2d 853, 855 (Tex.1995). The Court then remanded this case back to this court for consideration of the preemption question.

Factual Review

Mario Alvarado, a high school student, was injured on February 17, 1989 while riding as a passenger in the front seat of a 1988 Hyundai Excel when it overturned. Alvarado was thrown from the car when the sunroof opened. He received serious injuries which rendered him a paraplegic. The seatbelt system in a Hyundai Excel at that time was a "two-point" system which did not include a lap belt. Alvarado filed a product liability and negligence suit saying the Hyundai was a defective automobile because its seatbelt restraint system did not restrain. Hyundai's defense, among other things, was that their system was in compliance with applicable federal standards and that common law claims are preempted. It was upon these grounds that a partial summary judgment in favor of Hyundai was granted.

Preemption Standards of Review

Preemption power arises from Article VI of the Constitution, sometimes referred to as the Supremacy Clause. It says that the laws of the United States "shall be the supreme Law of the Land; ... any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." U.S. CONST. Art. VI, cl. 2. The Supreme Court has held that state law that conflicts with federal law is "without effect." Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U.S. 725, 746, 101 S.Ct. 2114, 2129, 68 L.Ed.2d 576 (1981). "... the purpose of Congress is the ultimate touchstone of pre-emption analysis." Malone v. White Motor Corp., 435 U.S. 497, 504, 98 S.Ct. 1185, 1190, 55 L.Ed.2d 443 (1978).

The purpose, or intent, of Congress may be express or implied. The leading Texas case on preemption, Moore v. Brunswick, 889 S.W.2d 246 (Tex.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 664, 130 L.Ed.2d 599 (1994), sets out the ways that federal law may supersede state laws:

1. Congress may explicitly state its intent to preempt in the language of the statute itself.

2. Preemption may be implied when federal law is so pervasive that there is no room for state law.

3. State law is preempted if it conflicts with federal law. If it is impossible to comply with both laws, it conflicts.

See Moore, 889 S.W.2d at 247, 248.

Preemption by the federal government is a serious inroad into the right of a state to make its own law, whether it be legislative enactment or common law. Therefore the preemption cases are interlaid with admonitions against an overeagerness to find preemption.

Consideration of issues arising under the Supremacy Clause "start[s] with the assumption that the historic police powers of the States [are] not to be superseded by ... Federal Act unless that [is] the clear and manifest purpose of Congress."

Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504, 516, 112 S.Ct. 2608, 2617, 120 L.Ed.2d 407 (quoting Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230, 67 S.Ct. 1146, 1152, 91 L.Ed. 1447 (1947). There is a "strong presumption against pre-emption". Cipollone, 505 U.S. at 523, 112 S.Ct. at 2621. The applicable statute upon which preemption claims are based must be "narrowly construe[d]". Id. at 523, 112 S.Ct. at 2621.

The lessons of Cipollone are that the preemption defense will be applied narrowly, that preemptive language of a statute or regulation will be interpreted strictly, and that few state-law damage claims will be preempted.

Moore, 889 S.W.2d at 250.

"Preemption should not be lightly inferred" because of "the significant state interest." Id. at 251. In his concurring opinion in Cipollone, Justice Blackmun stated:

Our precedents do not allow us to infer a scope of preemption beyond that which clearly is mandated by Congress' language.... We resort to principles of implied pre-emption--that is, inquiring whether Congress has occupied a particular field with the intent to supplant state law or whether state law actually conflicts with federal law (cites omitted) only when Congress has been silent with respect to pre-emption ... we cannot find the state common-law damages claims at issue in this case pre-empted by federal law in the absence of clear and unambiguous evidence that Congress intended that result.

Cipollone, 505 U.S. at 531, 112 S.Ct. at 2625.

Justice Blackmun explains that the Court's reluctance to find preemption where Congress has not spoken expressly and clearly is founded in the principles of federalism and respect for state sovereignty. He concludes:

We do not, absent unambiguous evidence, infer a scope of pre-emption beyond that which clearly is mandated by Congress' language.

Id., at 533, 112 S.Ct. at 2626.

The overall language in Cipollone is so strongly against implied preemption as to be called by learned commentators a death knell to implied preemption claims in automobile passive restraint claims. See Chadwell, Automobile Passive Restraint Claims Post-Cipollone: An End To The Federal Preemption Defense, 46 Baylor Law Review 141 (1994).

Keeping in mind the admonitions and guidance of both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court, we turn now to an analysis of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (Act) and the attendant Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (Standard).

Analysis of the Act and Standard

The Act of 1966 is an instructive example of what happens when the government imposes mandatory standards on a politically and financially powerful industry. The government makes bold pronouncements, considerable resistance is encountered, the government falls back, time limits come and go with liberal extensions, the party in power has their impact, yet gradually things do change. But not without a struggle. Standard 208 is the applicable standard in this case. It was first promulgated in 1967 and deals with occupant restraint when there is a collision. Virtually every provision has been fought over; most have been changed, sometimes many times. Standard 208, which deals with seat belts and airbags, is long, complicated, constantly in a state of change and difficult to read and understand. For example, the regulations on airbags, which were first mentioned in 1969 when comments were solicited on the merits of the airbags, triggered the following:

This was the first of approximately sixty NHTSA rulemaking notices imposing, amending, twice rescinding, and twice reimposing a passive restraint requirement. The airbag controversy, once commenced, would prove to have a life of its own, outlasting seven presidents, at least eight heads of the Department of Transportation, and more than eight Administrators of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Chadwell, supra, at 145.

It is little wonder that the parties to this litigation can find much to disagree upon in deciding what Standard 208 says and whether Hyundai had complied with the applicable provisions with the seat belts that they installed in this car in 1988. It underscores though why both the U.S. and Texas Supreme Courts do not favor implied preemption unless preemption "clearly is mandated by Congress' language." Cipollone, 505 U.S. at 533, 112 S.Ct. at 2626.

We must first examine if Congress has expressly preempted cases based on seat belt design. It might be thought that this would involve a simple reading of the statute: either they did or they didn't. But it is not simple because there are provisions that conflict on their face:

Whenever a Federal motor vehicle safety standard established under this...