Hyundai Motor Co. v. Rodriguez, PONTIAC-GMC

• Court: Supreme Court of Texas
• Writing for the Court: HECHT
• Citation: 995 S.W.2d 661
• Decision Date: 18 November 1998
• Docket Number: PONTIAC-GMC
• Parties: (Tex. 1999) HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA, INC., AND PORT CITYTRUCKS, INC. D/B/A HARBOR HYUNDAI, PETITIONERS v. ROWENA RODRIGUEZ, BY AND THROUGH HER NEXT FRIEND, ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, RESPONDENT NO. 97-0648

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995 S.W.2d 661 (Tex. 1999) HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA, INC., AND PORT CITY PONTIAC-GMC TRUCKS, INC. D/B/A HARBOR HYUNDAI, PETITIONERS
v.
ROWENA RODRIGUEZ, BY AND THROUGH HER NEXT FRIEND, ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, RESPONDENT NO. 97-0648 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS Argued November 18, 1998
Opinion delivered: June 10, 1999

ON APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF ERROR TO THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS

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JUSTICE HECHT delivered the opinion of the Court.

The sole question here before us is this: when claims for breach of an implied warranty and strict liability are both predicated on the dangerousness of a product's design, must the trial court ask the jury to make essentially the same factual determination separately for each legal theory? A divided court of appeals answered in the affirmative.¹ We disagree.

I

Rowena Rodriguez, then twenty-seven years old, suffered severe injuries when the 1988 Hyundai Excel-GL in which she was riding went out of control and rolled over. Rodriguez sued the vehicle manufacturers, Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Motor America, Inc., and the seller, Port City Pontiac-GMC Trucks, Inc., d/b/a Harbor Hyundai (collectively, "Hyundai"), alleging that the vehicle was not crashworthy because its roof structure and padding and its passenger restraint system were defectively designed so that she was thrown into the roof in the accident and injured more seriously than she would have been otherwise. Rodriguez claimed $20 million actual damages based on three legal theories: negligence; strict products liability, including design and marketing defects; and breach of implied warranty. All three theories were predicated on the same complaints, both in the pleadings and the evidence at trial: that defects in the roof and in the restraint system made the vehicle unreasonably dangerous. Hyundai contended at trial that Rodriguez's injuries were caused not by her impact against the roof of the vehicle but by her ejection from the vehicle due to her failure to wear her seat belt, or else by the negligence of the driver, Cruz.

The district court's charge to the jury contained only two questions concerning liability. One inquired whether any negligence of Hyundai, Rodriguez, or Cruz, was a proximate cause of Rodriguez's injuries. The jury found that only Rodriguez and Cruz negligently caused the accident, apparently crediting Hyundai's evidence that Rodriguez was injured when she was thrown outside the vehicle because she was not wearing her seat belt. (Rodriguez did not object at trial or on appeal to the

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admission of evidence that she was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident. The issue is not before us on appeal, and we therefore express no opinion on it.) The other liability question and instruction inquired about a design defect, as follows:

Was there a design defect in the 1988 Hyundai Excel at the time it left the possession of Hyundai Motor Company that was a producing cause of the injury in question?

A "design defect" is a condition of the product that renders it unreasonably dangerous as designed, taking into consideration the utility of the product and the risk involved in its use.

The jury answered "no". The district court refused to include in the charge questions concerning a marketing defect or a breach of implied warranty. Specifically, as pertaining to the issue now before us, the district court refused to submit the following question and instruction concerning breach of implied warranty requested by Rodriguez:

Was the automobile supplied by [Hyundai] unfit for the ordinary purposes for which such automobiles are used because of a defect, and, if so, was such unfit condition a proximate cause of the injury in question?

A defect means a condition of the goods that renders it unfit for the ordinary purposes for which it is used because of a lack of something necessary for adequacy.

The jury having failed to find Hyundai liable, the district court rendered judgment that Rodriguez take nothing.

Rodriguez appealed on several grounds, among them that the district court erred in refusing to include a jury question and instruction on her breach-of-warranty claim. Rejecting all Rodriguez's other arguments, the court of appeals accepted this one, reasoning that because "defect" is defined differently for products-liability and breach-of-implied-warranty causes of action, the district court was required to submit both matters to the jury and was not permitted "to combine independent grounds of recovery into a single question."² Consequently, the court reversed the judgment for Hyundai and remanded the case for trial on Rodriguez's breach-of-implied-warranty claim. Chief Justice Seerden dissented, concluding that "the jury's rejection of a strict liability design defect theory conclusively negated the elements necessary for Rodriguez to recover under her alternate theory of implied warranty of merchantability."³ The dissent argued that if the only defect alleged under either theory involves the dangerousness of the product, as in a crashworthiness case, the determination of "defect" for strict liability purposes also resolves the issue of "defect" for implied warranty purposes.⁴ Noting that liability for breach of implied warranty requires a finding of proximate cause ("but for" causation and foreseeability) while liability for a design defect requires a finding of producing cause ("but for" causation only), the dissent reasoned that if the jury failed to find that any defect in the vehicle was a producing cause of Rodriguez's injuries, it could not have found that the same alleged defect proximately caused her injuries.⁵

Only Hyundai appealed to this Court. We granted Hyundai's application for writ of error to consider whether the district court erred in refusing to include Rodriguez's breach-of-implied-warranty question and instruction in the jury charge.⁶

II

A trial court must submit in its charge to the jury all questions, instructions, and definitions raised by the pleadings and evidence.⁷ When feasible, jury

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questions should be in broad form, accompanied by appropriate instructions and definitions.⁸ A single question may relate to multiple legal theories. For example, in Texas Department of Human Services v. E.B., we held that a finding of grounds for termination of parental rights could be used to support one of two legal bases for termination.⁹ And in American National Petroleum Co. v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., we held that a damages finding on a contract claim would support recovery on a tort claim where the measure of damages was the same for either claim.¹⁰ Indeed, submission of a single question relating to multiple theories may be necessary to avoid the risk that the jury will become confused and answer questions inconsistently.¹¹ The goal of the charge is to submit to the jury the issues for decision logically,simply, clearly, fairly, correctly, and completely. Toward that end, the trial judge is accorded broad discretion so long as the charge is legally correct.¹²

Liability for personal injuries caused by a product's defective design can be imposed under several legal theories, among them negligence, breach of warranty, and strict products liability.¹³ The requisite proof for recovery on a design defect claim was prescribed by statute in 1993 and made the same for any legal theory asserted.¹⁴ But before enactment of that statute, when the case before us was tried,

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"design defect" was defined differently for different legal theories. In Plas-Tex, Inc. v. U.S. Steel Corp.,¹⁵ we explained the difference in the meaning of "defect" in a strict-liability action and an action under Texas Business & Commerce Code 2.314(b)(3)¹⁶ for breach of implied warranty of merchantability.¹⁷ For strict liability, "defect" means "a condition of the product that renders it unreasonably dangerous."¹⁸ For breach of implied warranty, a product is defective if it is "unfit for the ordinary purposes for which [it is] used because of a lack of something necessary for adequacy."¹⁹

The difference in the two concepts of "defect" is critical in circumstances like those presented in Plas-Tex. There the plaintiff alleged that polyester resins purchased for use in manufacturing fiberglass swimming pools caused the pools to delaminate. Asserting a breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, plaintiff sought to prove only that the resins were not fit for the ordinary purposes for which they were used; plaintiff did not contend - and could not successfully do so - that the resins or the resulting delamination made the swimming pools unreasonably dangerous. In Plas-Tex, plaintiff could recover on a breach-of-warranty claim but not on a strict-liability claim.

But in a crashworthiness case involving a claim for personal injuries, like the one now before us, strict-liability's and breach-of-warranty's concepts of "defect" are functionally identical. The claim in a crashworthiness case is that a defect in the vehicle caused an occupant to sustain injuries in an accident that he or she would not otherwise have suffered. A defect in a vehicle that makes it uncrashworthy and thus causes occupants to be exposed to an unreasonable risk of harm in the event of an accident is both "unfit for the ordinary purposes for which [it is] used because of a lack of something necessary for adequacy" and unreasonably dangerous. An uncrashworthy vehicle cannot be unfit for ordinary use but not unreasonably dangerous, nor can it be unreasonably dangerous but fit for ordinary use; it must be both or neither.

The congruence in crashworthiness cases of the two concepts of defect for strict-liability and breach-of-implied-warranty claims is illustrated in the case before us. Rodriguez's strict-liability and implied-warranty actions (as well as her negligence claim, although it does not concern us) stem from a...