Txi Operations, L.P. v. Perry

• Decision Date: 27 February 2009
• Docket Number: No. 05-0030.,05-0030.
• Citation: 278 S.W.3d 763
• Parties: TXI OPERATIONS, L.P., Petitioner, v. David PERRY, Respondent.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

278 S.W.3d 763

TXI OPERATIONS, L.P., Petitioner, v. David PERRY, Respondent.

No. 05-0030.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued January 26, 2006.

Decided February 27, 2009.

Zeb D. Zbranek, Zbranek Firm, P.C., Liberty, for Petitioner.

Brett S. Thomas and Jeffrey T. Roebuck, Roebuck & Thomas, PLCC, Marc P. Henry, Henry & Fuller, Beaumont, for Respondent.

Justice GREEN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice JEFFERSON, Justice O'NEILL, Justice WAINWRIGHT, Justice BRISTER, and Justice JOHNSON joined.

Rural unpaved roads with potholes at the cattle guards are quite common in this state. In this case, an invitee truck driver drove through one of those potholes several times, claiming injury on one of his last trips, and sued the landowner for its failure to adequately warn of the danger. The premises owner does not challenge whether it had a duty to warn,¹ but claims instead that a fifteen miles-per-hour speed limit sign posted near the pothole was an adequate warning as a matter of law. We conclude that it was not. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

I

TXI Operations, LP, owns and operates the Dolen Sand Pit and is responsible for maintaining an unpaved road that connects the pit to the highway. David Perry, a truck driver for Campbell Ready Mix, regularly drove back and forth on the road to load and transport materials in connection with his duties for Campbell. On one trip down the road, his vehicle struck a hole at a cattle guard. As a result, he was thrown into the roof of the truck's cab and injured. Perry had already driven the road at least four times that day without injury, and admitted he knew the hole was there. He was also aware of a fifteen miles-per-hour speed limit sign that TXI had posted near the hole. Perry nevertheless claimed that TXI was negligent in failing to warn him of the existence of a road condition that it knew was dangerous.

A jury found that Perry and TXI were both negligent and equally at fault. As a result, the trial court entered a judgment for Perry, reducing the jury's damage award by his percentage of fault. TXI appealed, claiming that posting the speed limit sign discharged its duty to warn Perry of the dangerous road condition. The court of appeals disagreed and affirmed the trial court's judgment. ___ S.W.3d ____, 2004 WL 2610451. In this Court, TXI does not contest that it owed a duty to warn its invitees; it asserts only that the speed limit sign was an adequate warning of the dangerous road condition as a matter of law.²

II

Premises owners and occupiers owe a duty to keep their premises safe for invitees against known conditions that pose unreasonable risks of harm. See, e.g., CMH Homes, Inc. v. Daenen, 15 S.W.3d 97, 99 (Tex.2000). The duty is to "take whatever action is reasonably prudent under the circumstances to reduce or to eliminate the unreasonable risk from that condition." Corbin v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 648 S.W.2d 292, 295 (Tex.1983). The existence of this duty is a question of law for the court. Moritz, 257 S.W.3d at 217. When such a duty is owed, the premises owner or occupier must either adequately warn of the dangerous condition or make the condition reasonably safe. See State v. Williams, 940 S.W.2d 583, 584 (Tex.1996) (per curiam). On appeal, it is undisputed that Perry was an invitee on TXI's premises, that TXI knew about the hole in the road, that the hole constituted a dangerous condition, and that TXI did not attempt to repair the hole. Perry also admits that he knew about the hole and had encountered it several times before his injury. But TXI does not attempt to argue that it owed no duty of care because of Perry's voluntary conduct or because the hole was obvious. Rather, TXI argues that its duty to Perry was discharged when it posted the speed limit sign.

In a premises liability case such as this, the defendant's negligence is determined by asking whether the defendant "exercise[d] reasonable care to reduce or to eliminate the risk" created by the premises defect. Corbin, 648 S.W.2d at 296; see also Parker v. Highland Park, Inc., 565 S.W.2d 512, 521 (Tex.1978). Negligence is commonly a question of fact unless the evidence establishes a complete absence of negligence as a matter of law. Here, it does not. A "be careful" warning might be some evidence that the premises owner was not negligent, but it is not conclusive in a situation such as this where the posted speed-limit sign was only a general instruction; it neither informed the driver of road hazards generally, nor did it identify the particular hazard that TXI now says the sign was meant to warn against. See State v. McBride, 601 S.W.2d 552, 554, 556-57 (Tex.Civ.App.-Waco 1980, writ ref'd n.r.e.) (holding that an owner had not satisfied the duty to warn drivers of a slick and muddy road with a "`SLOW' sign and a `35 MPH' sign"). The inadequacy of the sign is supported by the evidence that Perry was following the sign's instruction at the time of his injury. Of course, an alternative to providing an adequate warning would have been for TXI to repair the pothole so as to make the condition reasonably safe as a matter of law. See Williams, 940 S.W.2d at 584. But the record does not reflect that TXI took this action.

The dissent takes issue with the notion that potholes in rural roads pose an unreasonable risk of harm to 18-wheel truck drivers because potholes are common, they are open and obvious, and no warning about them should even be necessary. But even the dissent concedes, as it must, that the duty issue is not before us. That being so, of course, we do not decide it. Instead, we must assume that a duty to warn exists. The dissent's view seems to be that because it concludes no warning should really be necessary, any warning is adequate. That view, of course, completely discounts the existence of duty. If a duty is owed, an adequate warning is required. We agree with the dissent that a speed limit sign does not necessarily mean the driver should expect the posted limit to be a safe speed under all circumstances. Regardless, the record reflects some evidence that the warning here was not adequate to warn of the pothole and that the pothole presented a risk even at a speed slower than the posted limit. As a result, the jury could have properly concluded that TXI's sign did not adequately warn Perry of the dangerous condition.

The judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed.

Justice HECHT filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice MEDINA and Justice WILLETT joined.

Justice HECHT, joined by Justice MEDINA and Justice WILLETT, dissenting.

The morning was clear and hot, the sun brightly shining, as the 18-wheeler sand-and-gravel truck lumbered along the rough dirt road from the main highway over to the Dolen sand pit. Behind the wheel sat David Perry, 36. For seven years, he had been driving rigs for Campbell Concrete & Materials, L.P. That day, his job was hauling sand from the Dolen pit to Campbell's ready-mix concrete plant about an hour away.

TXI Operations, L.P. owned the Dolen sand pit and maintained the three-mile dirt road that ran from the highway through the woods to the facility. Trucks would enter the sand pit, load, weigh at the scale house, and then leave the way they came in. The road was wide enough for trucks to pass each other coming and going. Eight to twelve thousand trucks a year went in and out. The day Perry was injured, seventy trucks crossed the scales, thirty-seven of them driven by twelve Campbell truckers, three by Perry himself.

The heavy 18-wheelers — each weighed some 30,000 pounds empty and 80,000 pounds loaded — were hard on the road, especially when it was wet. The road was rough as a scrub board and filled with potholes. TXI graded the road regularly, though not frequently enough to suit the drivers, who often complained about how bumpy it was, to little avail. TXI encouraged truckers to slow down, especially on blind curves, posting speed limit signs from 15 mph to 25 mph along the road.

Jeff Casey, a Campbell driver, testified: "We ran that road so much that we kind of knew where the [rough] areas were, but right there at the cattle guard, it was always a little bit worse right there." The cattle guard to which he referred was toward the end of the road, not far from the sand pit and scale house. The road up to the cattle guard ran straight for half a mile or so. The cattle guard was only one truck wide and plainly visible. Stretched indolently in front of the cattle guard, as one entered the plant, lay a large pothole. The day of Perry's accident, the pothole was nine inches deep (other days it was deeper) and wide enough that a truck could not avoid it and still get through the cattle guard. TXI's posted speed limit there was 15 mph, although a trucker could not drive an empty truck even 10 mph through the pothole without being bounced around the cab and risking injury. But in fact, no one was injured, ever. Scores of truckers crossed the cattle guard thousands of times without injury, except for one fateful day in May.

Perry first crossed the cattle guard in his empty truck a little before 10:30 a.m. He was running with Casey, who was driving the truck right ahead of him. The two trucks loaded, weighed, and left, crossing the cattle guard on their way out. About two hours later they returned with Casey again in the lead, crossing the cattle guard as before, both on their way in and on their way out. At 3:00 p.m., they were back, this time with Perry in the lead. At the cattle guard, he hit the pothole going 10-15 mph and bounced the truck, jamming his head into the roof of the cab. He radioed back to Casey, who had seen Perry's truck bounce, telling him what had happened. The two continued on to the plant, loaded, weighed, and left without further incident.

Perry did not report his injury for several weeks. Three days before the two-year statute of limitations would have run, he sued TXI for...