General Motors Corp. v. Iracheta

• Decision Date: 08 April 2005
• Docket Number: No. 02-0932.,02-0932.
• Citation: 161 S.W.3d 462
• Parties: GENERAL MOTORS CORP., Petitioner, v. Rita L. IRACHETA, Administrator of the Estates of David Iracheta, Deceased, and Edgar Iracheta, Deceased, Respondent.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 462

161 S.W.3d 462

GENERAL MOTORS CORP., Petitioner, v. Rita L. IRACHETA, Administrator of the Estates of David Iracheta, Deceased, and Edgar Iracheta, Deceased, Respondent.

No. 02-0932.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued September 25, 2003.

Decided April 8, 2005.

Cary Alan Slobin, Jeffrey Cox, Kyle H. Dreyer, Hartline Dacus Barger Dreyer & Kern, LLP, Dallas, Darrell L. Barger, Hartline Dacus Barger Dreyer & Kern, LLP, Corpus Christi, Sharon E. Callaway, Crofts & Callaway, P.C., San Antonio, Donato D. Ramos, Law Office of Donato Ramos, Laredo, for petitioner.

George Russell Meurer, Kenneth A. Valls, Wilson Trevino Freed Valls & Trevino, LLP, Laredo, Robert E. Lapin, Lapin & Landa, L.L.P., Houston, Vincent L. Marable III, Paul Webb, P.C., Wharton, Luther H. Soules III, Langley & Banack, Inc., San Antonio, for respondent.

Justice HECHT delivered the opinion of the Court.

Silvandria Iracheta was driving a 1988 General Motors Oldsmobile Toronado on a two-lane highway near Laredo just after noon on a clear day when she suddenly veered across the center line into an oncoming 18-wheeler at a closing speed of over 100 m.p.h. The truck rolled over the car, ripping off its hood and roof, and severely damaging its left side. The collision ruptured the truck's fuel system, splattering diesel over both vehicles that exploded in flame. Several minutes after the car came to rest at the side of the road, a second fire exploded, this one fueled by gasoline from the car. Silvandria died instantly in the collision, and her four-year-old son David, seated in the back, may have as well. Her other passenger, nine-year-old son Edgar, belted in the passenger seat, remained conscious and died in the second fire.

The boys' grandmother, Rita L. Iracheta, sued General Motors Corporation on behalf of their estates.¹ (The boys' father could not be found to bring a wrongful death action.)² A jury failed to find that Silvandria's negligence caused the boys' deaths and found instead that Edgar's death, but not David's, was caused by a design defect in the car which allowed gasoline to siphon from the fuel system. The jury found Edgar's pain and anguish damages to be $10 million. The trial court rendered judgment on the verdict, only General Motors appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed.³

In this Court, General Motors raises a number of issues, one of which, we conclude, is dispositive: there is no evidence that the second fire was caused by the defect in the Toronado. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and render judgment for General Motors.

Iracheta's proof of causation rests on the testimony of two expert witnesses. One, Eduardo Sanchez, testified on the origins and causes of the fires resulting from the collision. The diesel from the truck's ruptured fuel system, he said, exploded on impact in a fireball that, although intense, lasted only the few seconds it took for the Toronado to skid down the highway to a stop. Consistent with the accounts of the truck driver and two other men at the scene, Sanchez testified that after this first flash fire, small spot fires broke out and continued to burn in the car's engine and passenger compartments and in the grass around the vehicle for about ten minutes, more or less. The three men approached the vehicle and tried to free Edgar, who was screaming in pain in the front seat, but the car was too hot for them to reach inside. Suddenly, they heard what they described as a "whoosh" sound at the rear of the vehicle, and the second fire exploded, fueled by gasoline from the car. Although the gas tank had remained intact, Sanchez testified that gasoline leaked from the fuel system onto the ground for several minutes until the vapors ignited.

Determining whether the car's fuel system could leak was not, according to Sanchez, within the scope of his expertise. For that, he said, he relied on Iracheta's other expert, John Stilson, a mechanical engineer with experience in accident reconstruction. Stilson testified that gasoline could leak or siphon from the fuel tank only through a return line that ran from the engine along the left side of the car to the tank. The line was made of steel tubing and did not rupture in the collision, but it was attached on one end to the engine and on the other to the tank by short, flexible rubber hoses that were both found to have burned away at some point. Tests Stilson conducted on a similar vehicle showed that when the car was inclined toward the front, as Iracheta's was when it came to rest off to the side of the highway, gasoline would siphon out of the tank onto the ground if either the front hose or the rear hose was opened. This condition, Stilson testified, was a design defect in the car.

Although Stilson found that gasoline would siphon from the return line at either end, depending on where the breach occurred, Iracheta concedes that she had to prove that gasoline leaked at the rear of the car rather than the front, since all of the witnesses present at the scene testified that the "whoosh" and the second fire came from the rear, and Sanchez testified that the fire could not have happened as it did if gasoline had not siphoned at the rear. Furthermore, Iracheta concedes that she was required to prove that the rear hose was severed or torn in the impact before it burned; otherwise the gasoline escaping from the burning hose would have been ignited immediately by the flame and there would never have been the "whoosh" sound that everyone present heard. As Iracheta's counsel explained at oral argument:

JUSTICE: You do have to show siphoning occurred at the rear to get causation here on this record, because it would be inconclusive if there were only siphoning at the front?

COUNSEL: We have to present evidence that a jury could reasonably find that the siphoning caused a spill at the rear of the car, yes.

JUSTICE: Does it matter how the rear opened up? Does it matter whether it burned through or whether it was caused by the collision?

COUNSEL: I think it may, and the reason for that is the "whoosh". Again, it comes back to: how did this car suddenly, after several minutes—from 10 to 20 minutes—become engulfed in this cloud of flames that ultimately killed Edgar Iracheta? If the line burned, there could have been just a jet stream of flame like at the end of a welding torch, which might not create that "whoosh". And here the spill at the rear—where there was no immediate fire, or no testimony that there was any immediate fire, falling on the ground—creating a vapor that spread until it found an ignition source and then exploded—is what Mr. Sanchez's testimony establishes. Also the eyewitnesses—they were at the vehicle, and that's why this is not a circumstantial evidence case altogether—testified that the fire came from the rear, the "whoosh" came from the rear. And Mr. Sanchez in his investigation in reaching his conclusions talked to all of those eyewitnesses, talked to Stilson, observed the replica of the car, observed the car itself, the damage that went all down the side of the car, including the rear where the rear hose was broken, and that's how he came to his opinion that the rear hose was broken and that's where it siphoned.

The difficulty is that there are significant conflicts in and between the testimony of Sanchez and Stilson, each stressing both the extent and the limits of his own expertise and that of the other. Stilson testified that his assignment in the case was to determine exactly where gasoline leaked or siphoned from the Toronado fuel tank,⁴ and that he took it upon himself to make that determination.⁵ This, he stated, was his area of expertise, not Sanchez's.⁶ Stilson testified that gasoline siphoned at the front of the return line⁷ and did not siphon at the rear.⁸ The rear hose on the return line, he said, was not injured in the collision but burned away in the fire.⁹

Sanchez testified at his deposition that he could not say where the leak in the return fuel line occurred,¹⁰ that he was unable to establish whether the line had been compromised at impact,¹¹ that he was not an expert on that subject, and that he would leave the determination to someone else.¹² At trial, however, Sanchez was "100 percent" certain that the leak occurred at the rear of the car¹³ and not at the front.¹⁴ For one thing, he said, there was no evidence of intensified fire in the front,¹⁵ and for another, a leak at the front of the car could not have caused the "whoosh" at the rear.¹⁶ Furthermore Sanchez stated, he had been told by Stilson that gasoline siphoned from the rear hose because it was damaged by the impact of the two vehicles.¹⁷ But later in his testimony, Sanchez admitted that Stilson had told him many times the rear hose had burned through, not that it broke from the impact of the two vehicles.¹⁸ Sanchez stated that it was impossible for the rear hose to have burned through because gasoline in the hose would have been ignited immediately, without the delay and the "whoosh" sound.¹⁹ He was "100 percent" sure of this, too.²⁰ Yet at another point he testified that where the leak occurred was immaterial because fires inside the car and in the surrounding grass could have ignited the gasoline vapors.²¹ The internally conflicting nature of Sanchez's testimony is perhaps best illustrated in the following answers to questions by Iracheta's counsel within four minutes of each other at trial (as indicated in the reporter's record):

Q I've written up here, sir, the question: where did the line siphon? And I'm referring to the return line. That is a question that you have given an answer to in this case, correct?

A That's correct.

Q Would you tell us your understanding of whether or not that was Mr. Stilson's area of expertise for purposes of this case?

A Yes, it was.

* * *

Q So although Mr. Stilson was asked his opinion in the case with regard to the question of where did the return line siphon, would you tell...