General Motors Corp. v. Sanchez

• Decision Date: 01 July 1999
• Citation: 997 S.W.2d 584
• Parties: (Tex. 1999) GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION AND LAWRENCE MARSHALL CHEVROLET OLDSMOBILE, INC., PETITIONERS v. A. J. SANCHEZ, ET AL., RESPONDENTS NO. 98-0442
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 584

997 S.W.2d 584 (Tex. 1999)

GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION AND LAWRENCE MARSHALL CHEVROLET OLDSMOBILE, INC., PETITIONERS v. A. J. SANCHEZ, ET AL., RESPONDENTS

NO. 98-0442

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS

Argued January 12, 1999

Decided July 1, 1999

ON PETITION FOR REVIEW FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] JUSTICE GONZALES delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The principal question in this case is when does the doctrine of comparative responsibility apply in a products-liability case. Relying on its reading of our decision in Keen v. Ashot Ashkelon, Ltd.,¹ the court of appeals held that the decedent's responsibility for the accident that resulted in his death should not be compared with the manufacturer's responsibility because the decedent's actions merely amounted to the failure to discover or guard against a product defect.² We conclude that: (1) comparative responsibility applies in strict liability if a plaintiff's negligence is something other than the mere failure to discover or guard against a product defect, and (2) there was evidence here the decedent was negligent apart from the mere failure to discover or guard against a product defect. We also conclude that punitive damages may not be awarded in this case because the evidence is legally insufficient to support the finding of gross negligence. Therefore, we reverse the court of appeals' judgment and render judgment for the plaintiffs' actual damages, as reduced by the jury's comparative responsibility finding.

I

Because there were no witnesses, relatively little is known first hand about the circumstances of the accident that is the basis of this litigation. Lee Sanchez, Jr. left his home to feed a pen of heifers in March 1993. The ranch foreman found his lifeless body the next morning and immediately called Sanchez's father. Apparently, Sanchez's 1990 Chevy pickup had rolled backward with the driver's side door open pinning Sanchez to the open corral gate in the angle between the open door and the cab of the truck. Sanchez suffered a broken right arm and damaged right knee where the gate crushed him against the door pillar, the vertical metal column to which the door is hinged. He bled to death from a deep laceration in his right upper arm.

The Sanchez family, his estate, and his wife sued General Motors Corporation and the dealership that sold the pickup for negligence, products liability, and gross negligence based on a defect in the truck's transmission and transmission-control linkage. The plaintiffs presented circumstantial evidence to support the following theory of how the accident happened. Sanchez drove his truck into the corral and stopped to close the gate. He mis-shifted into what he thought was Park, but what was actually an intermediate, "perched" position between Park and Reverse where the transmission was in "hydraulic neutral." Expert witnesses explained that hydraulic neutral exists at the intermediate positions between the denominated gears, Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Low, where no gear is actually engaged. Under this scenario, as Sanchez walked toward the gate, the gear shift slipped from the perched position of hydraulic neutral into Reverse and the truck started to roll backwards. It caught Sanchez at or near the gate and slammed him up against it, trapping his right arm and knee. He was pinned between the gate and the door pillar by the pressure the truck exerted while idling in Reverse. Struggling to free himself, Sanchez severed an artery in his right arm and bled to death after 45 to 75 minutes.

In the trial court, G.M. offered alternative theories explaining the cause of the accident, all of which directed blame at Sanchez. It suggested that Sanchez left his truck in Reverse either accidentally or in a conscious attempt to prevent cattle from escaping the corral. Alternatively, G.M. suggested that Sanchez simply left the truck in Neutral and it rolled down the five degree slope toward the gate. Finally, G.M. argued that even if the accident was caused by a mis-shift as alleged by the plaintiffs, the mis-shift was a result of operator error, and not a defect in design.

The jury rejected G.M.'s theories and found that G.M. was negligent, the transmission was defectively designed, and G.M.'s warning was so inadequate as to constitute a marketing defect. The jury also found that Sanchez was fifty percent responsible for the accident, but the trial court disregarded this finding. The trial court rendered judgment for actual and punitive damages of $8.5 million for the plaintiffs. A panel of the court of appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment with one justice dissenting.³ Sitting en banc, a majority of the court of appeals adopted the panel's opinion and judgment.⁴ Two justices joined the dissent, and one concurred in the judgment.⁵

G.M. argues that there is no evidence to support liability for negligence or strict liability. Alternatively, G.M. challenges the trial court's refusal to apply the comparative responsibility statute.⁶ The plaintiffs respond that evidence supports both the negligence and strict liability findings, and that Sanchez's negligence was nothing more than a failure to discover or guard against a product defect. Thus, they contend, comparative responsibility does not apply here as a defense to strict liability.

Here, G.M. does not dispute that Sanchez's fatal injury was caused when he mis-shifted the truck's transmission into hydraulic neutral, which then migrated into Reverse. The parties agree that all transmissions made today can mis-shift, that no design eliminates the possibility of a mis-shift, and that a mis-shifted car is dangerous. As G.M. puts it, a "[m]is-shift is just physics." G.M. contends that it has no liability, even if its product is defective, because the plaintiffs failed to present evidence of a safer alternative design.

We consider first the evidence of strict liability. We will sustain G.M.'s no evidence point only if there is no more than a scintilla of evidence to prove the existence of a product defect.⁷

II

A design defect renders a product unreasonably dangerous as designed, taking into consideration the utility of the product and the risk involved in its use.⁸ A plaintiff must prove that there is a safer alternative design in order to recover under a design defect theory.⁹ An alternative design must substantially reduce the risk of injury and be both economically and technologically feasible.¹⁰ We first examine the evidence concerning the operation of the transmission in Sanchez's truck and then determine whether the plaintiffs have proven a safer alternative design.

A

Most of the plaintiff's design evidence came in through the testimony of the plaintiffs' expert, Simon Tamny, who testified about the operation of the 700R4 transmission in Sanchez's truck. He opined that the G.M. transmission and transmission-control linkage presented a particular risk. All transmissions have an intermediate position between Reverse and Park. It is impossible, under federal standardization guidelines, to design a gear shift without an intermediate position between Reverse and Park. However, Tamny testified that G.M.'s transmission has the added danger that internal forces tend to move the gear selector toward Reverse rather than Park when the driver inadvertently leaves the lever in this intermediate position. Tamny explained how G.M. could alter the design to make the operation of the 700R4 safer.

When a driver moves the gearshift of Sanchez's truck from one position to another, a system of rod linkage transmits the motion from the gearshift on the steering column to the manual lever of the transmission. The manual lever is a semicircular part which is also known as the "rooster comb" because of the series of tooth-like peaks and dips along the perimeter of the curve that are similar to the comb on a rooster's head. As it turns, the rooster comb operates the manual valve, which directs hydraulic fluid around the transmission to engage and disengage gears. A stationary roller, held in place by a spring, moves along the peaks and dips of the rotating rooster comb when the gear shift lever on the steering column is moved from one gear to the next. The dips of the rooster comb correspond to the gears, generally: Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Low. The purpose of the roller and rooster comb is to aid the driver to properly position the manual valve. When a gear position is reached, the roller snaps into the dip of the rooster comb, giving feedback to the driver that the gear has been properly selected.

As the gear shift is moved from Reverse to Park, the roller rides up the peak on the rooster comb, the manual valve begins to hydraulically disengage Reverse, and a mechanical rod attached to the rooster comb begins to push against the ratchet spring that engages a device called the parking pawl. The parking pawl locks the transmission output shaft when the vehicle is in Park and prevents the wheels from turning.

It is possible for the gear shift to be moved to a position between Reverse and Park, called hydraulic neutral by the parties. In hydraulic neutral, the roller is perched at the peak between the two gears. At this point, Reverse is hydraulically disengaged, and the ratchet spring is forcing the parking pawl against the output shaft. The rooster comb has a designed predisposition to move toward a gear position, in this case either Park or Reverse. However, the friction between the metal parts of the rod linkage between the rooster comb and the gearshift, as well as other forces, provide enough resistance that the roller will sometimes remained perched in this precarious position. Figuratively speaking, the roller is balanced on the head of a pin, as the peak on the rooster comb is .0030 of an inch wide. Tamny performed an experiment in which he moved the gear selector of Sanchez's truck to...