Turbines, Inc. v. Dardis

• Decision Date: 30 July 1999
• Citation: 1 S.W.3d 726
• Parties: (Tex.App.-Amarillo 1999) TURBINES, INC., APPELLANT V. VAN DARDIS AND DANNA RENEE DARDIS, APPELLEES NO. 07-97-0388-CV
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 726

1 S.W.3d 726 (Tex.App.-Amarillo 1999)

TURBINES, INC., APPELLANT

V.

VAN DARDIS AND DANNA RENEE DARDIS, APPELLEES

NO. 07-97-0388-CV

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS AT AMARILLO

July 30, 1999

PANEL D, FROM THE 237TH DISTRICT COURT OF LUBBOCK COUNTY; NO. 95-550,841, HONORABLE JOHN R. MCFALL, JUDGE

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Before BOYD, C.J., and QUINN and REAVIS, JJ.

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

JOHN T. BOYD, Chief Justice.

After considering appellees' motion for rehearing, we withdraw our opinion of May 25, 1999, and substitute the following opinion.

In this appeal appellant, Turbines, Inc. presents five issues challenging a judgment against it for claims arising out of an airplane crash. In response to a jury verdict, the trial court awarded Van Dardis (Dardis), the pilot of the plane, and his wife Danna Renee Dardis, $435,455 in actual damages and $500,000 in exemplary damages for their claims of negligence, gross negligence, and strict products liability. In its first two issues, Turbines questions the submission of jury questions on strict products liability and an instruction on res ipsa loquitur, in issues three and four, it challenges the sufficiency of the evidence of negligence and gross negligence, and in issue five, it assigns error to the admission of evidence that Turbines had temporarily surrendered its repair station certificate. For the reasons stated herein, we reverse the judgment of the trial court and render judgment that appellees take nothing.

The nature of Turbines' challenges require a rather detailed recitation of the evidence presented in the trial court. Turbines is in the business of performing maintenance and repair on turbine aircraft engines. They have a repair station certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to perform work on engines manufactured by Pratt & Whitney. The certificate excluded authority to perform certain procedures, such as overhauls. G & G AeroServ, Inc. performs mechanical work on aircraft engines and airframes. Working together, Turbines and G & G developed a procedure for modifying a model of aircraft used for crop dusting, the Piper Brave, from its original piston engine to a turbine engine. The purpose of the modification was to provide the airplane with increased power and reliability. Although the Piper Brave airframe was only rated for 375 horsepower, the PT6 turbine engine could produce 550 horsepower. Part of the modification included instrument markings to indicate the maximum power setting for the engine so the pilot would not exceed the 375 horsepower limit. G & G obtained approval from the FAA in the form of a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) to perform this modification commercially. Dardis was an aviation mechanic certified by the FAA and a co-owner of G & G. Dardis worked primarily on turbine engines and helped obtain the STC.

Glen Carlson, a resident of Montana, owned a Piper Brave and asked G & G to convert it to a turbine engine in accordance with the STC. The model of engine selected for the conversion was a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-6. Turbines assembled and tested a used PT6A-6 turbine engine¹ in the summer of 1993 and subsequently shipped it to G & G. Dardis personally installed the new engine and tested it before flight. The aircraft was certified as airworthy by G & G on March 22, 1994. The following day, Dardis departed from Lubbock International Airport to return the plane to Carlson. Shortly after takeoff, Dardis noticed sparks from the exhaust and an elevated engine temperature. He returned to the Lubbock airport to investigate the problems. When these conditions were reported to Turbines, Jim Mills, President of Turbines, asked Dardis to return half of the engine, the power section,² for inspection. Turbines was unable to find any defects in the power section but replaced a bearing and returned the power section to G & G. After Dardis reinstalled the power section, he continued to express concern over an elevated engine temperature. Mills explained the temperature difference was a result of the difference in the PT6A-6 engine and the PT6A-20 model.

The Crash

On April 1, 1994, Dardis again attempted to return the modified plane to Carlson in Montana. After an uneventful flight from Lubbock, Dardis landed in Beloit, Kansas, to show the plane to agricultural pilots and potential customers. After showing the plane to these pilots, Dardis taxied onto the runway for departure. The parties present differing accounts of the events which followed.

According to Dardis, he performed a normal takeoff and the plane performed properly during takeoff. He climbed to about "a couple hundred feet" at the "best angle of climb,"³ leveled out, then made a 180 degree right turn with a 30 to 45 degree bank angle. After he leveled the plane from making the turn, the airplane "just lost power." It immediately lost airspeed and the right wing stalled⁴ and dropped. Dardis attempted to apply full power but the engine did not respond and the plane continued to "fall." Dardis crashed through a hangar and came to rest on the building's concrete floor.

The eyewitness accounts presented by Turbines consisted of the testimony of three pilots who witnessed the takeoff and ensuing crash: Robert Kadel, an agricultural pilot with 8,000 hours of flight experience, 6,000 hours of which were in agricultural aircraft; Jim Rome, an agricultural pilot with 14,000 hours of flight experience; and Steve Thompson, an airline transport pilot and flight instructor with 10,000 hours of flight experience. Each testified that when Dardis departed from the Beloit airport, he only taxied about 1,000 feet down the 3,600 foot runway before turning around to depart to the south. Each testified Dardis's ground roll was very short and the airplane climbed at a very steep angle. They also testified that when Dardis made a 180 degree turn, it was a very sharp turn in which he banked the plane approximately 60 degrees. According to Rome, the bank angle further increased to almost 90 degrees, which would place the wings in an almost vertical position. Kadel explained that a high bank angle significantly increases the airspeed required to avoid a stall. Kadel and Rome testified that the airplane stalled and rolled or went into a spin and rapidly lost altitude until it crashed into the hangar. Thompson said the plane "fell" into the hangar. Each of the pilots testified that there was no change in the engine sound during the flight.

As is apparent from these differing accounts, Dardis's theory was that the crash was caused by a sudden engine failure, while Turbines took the position that Dardis did not maintain sufficient airspeed, caused the plane to stall at a low altitude, and was unable to recover control. The remaining evidence presented at trial consisted of expert testimony from post-accident investigations. We will examine the evidence of each party in turn.

Evidence on Engine Failure

In support of his theory of engine failure, Dardis presented expert testimony that the engine was not producing power at the time it struck the ground and that the cause of the engine failure was the failure of a bleed valve in the compressor section of the engine. The first expert called by Dardis was David Hall.⁵ Hall's expert testimony was that the engine was producing little or no power at the time it struck the ground. This opinion was based on examinations of the propeller and engine. Factors leading to this conclusion were that the propeller was bent off of the supporting shaft rather than being twisted off and that the exhaust case, which provides the structural connection between the front and rear of the engine, was "bent and kinked" but not severely twisted, as he would expect if the engine had been producing high power on impact. Hall declined to give an opinion on why the engine was not producing power at impact. On cross-examination, he conceded it was "possible for a pilot seeing the ground coming up, would close the throttle."

Dardis also presented the testimony of Don Hamill. Hamill was a former employee of Pratt & Whitney where his duties focused on investigation of external components of Pratt & Whitney engines. The investigations were of components returned to Pratt & Whitney by mechanics because they did, or were suspected of, malfunction. Some of these investigations arose out of aircraft crashes. Hamill stated he had investigated thousands of compressor bleed valves. Turbines presented no objection to Hamill's qualification as an expert in the external components of the PT6-A engine.

In his investigation, Hamill ruled out other systems, such as the fuel system, as the source of any failure. When he went to examine a component called the compressor bleed valve, he found that it was missing. Because he was not able to examine the valve and had ruled out malfunction in other systems, Hamill concluded that a failure in the bleed valve caused a loss of power and resulting crash.

Hamill supported his conclusion by explaining the operation and construction of the valve, together with the known history of the valve installed on this engine. The testimony of Hamill and others explained that turbine engines consist of two sections, a compressor section and a power section. The compressor section supplies compressed air to the power section where it is mixed with fuel and burned. At low engine speeds, the compressor supplies more air than is needed by the power section and the bleed valve allows the excess pressure to be vented. The valve remains open (venting pressure) until the engine reaches about 80 percent of its maximum power, at which point it begins to close. The valve is designed to close by the time the engine reaches full power.

The valve operates by using the pressure with the differential between two points acting on a rubber diaphragm. It was Hamill's opinion that a pinhole in the...