Whirlpool Corp. v. Camacho
| Decision Date | 11 December 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 08-0175.,08-0175. |
| Parties | WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. Margarita CAMACHO, et al., Respondents. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
Lynne Liberato, Alene Ross Levy, Mark Ryan Trachtenberg, Haynes and Boone, LLP, Juan Noe Garza Jr., Abraham Watkins Nichols Sorrels & Friend, Houston, Keith N. Uhles, Royston Rayzor Vickery & Williams, L.L.P., Brownsville, Douglas K. Dieterly, Peter J. Rusthoven, Barnes & Thornburg, South Bend, IN, for Petitioner.
Kevin H. DuBose, Robert B. DuBose, Alexander Dubose & Townsend LLP, Houston, Joe Escobedo Jr., John L. Tippit III, Escobedo, Tippit & Cardenas, L.L.P., Luis M. Cardenas, Albert A. `Beto' Munoz II, Law Office of Alberto A. Munoz, II, David H. Hockema, Hockema & Longoria, Mauro Fernando Ruiz, Hockema, Tippit & Escobedo, L.L.P., McAllen, Cesar Ricardo Perez, Watts Law Firm, Aaron Ian Vela, The Buzbee Law Firm, Edinburg, for Respondents.
Joseph G. Petrosinelli, Williams & Connolly, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae General Electric Co.
Lauren L. Beck-Harris, Johnson Spalding Doyle West & Trent, L.L.P., Houston, for Amicus Curiae Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc.
In this products liability case the jury found that a design defect in an electric Whirlpool clothes dryer caused a fatal fire. We must decide whether there is legally sufficient evidence that the dryer's design was defective because it incorporated a corrugated lint transport tube as part of its air circulation system. Because we conclude that the expert testimony of design defect is legally insufficient to support the verdict, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and render judgment for Whirlpool.
In October 2002, Santos and Margarita Camacho purchased a used electric Whirlpool Easy Clean 100 clothes dryer from their daughter and installed it in their trailer home. Late in the evening of February 10, 2003, Margarita started the dryer and then lay down in an adjacent bedroom. Sometime later her teenage son Joab came into the bedroom to go to bed so Margarita moved to the living room. On her way, she opened the dryer door. At trial she did not recall whether the dryer had stopped running by that time, but she recalled that she did not notice anything unusual, nor did she see or smell smoke or fire.1 Later, while she was in the living room, Margarita smelled smoke. She testified that she looked into the hallway, saw fire "coming from the rear part of the dryer and from inside the dryer," and began yelling to alert the family. The fire destroyed the trailer home. All the family escaped except Joab, who was trapped in his bedroom and was killed.
The fire was investigated by local fire department and law enforcement officials, federal alcohol, tobacco, and firearms agents, and two experts hired by the Camachos' attorneys. Several months later, Whirlpool was notified of the claim that the fire started in its dryer, and it also investigated. By that time the fire scene had been largely cleaned up and cleared and relevant debris, including the dryer, removed. Various theories were advanced for the fire's cause, and different conclusions were drawn about whether the fire started in the dryer. The fire marshal concluded that it did not; the experts hired by the Camachos' attorneys concluded that it did; Whirlpool concluded that it did not.
Margarita and Santos, individually and on behalf of Joab's estate and on behalf of their other sons, sued Whirlpool. They claimed that Whirlpool's use of a corrugated tube in the dryer's air circulation system was a design defect. Allegedly, the tube became clogged and caused lint to be discharged into the dryer cabinet where lint particles were ignited by the dryer's heater element and ignited particles were circulated into the dryer drum where they ignited the clothes. The Camachos asserted that the fire escaped the dryer drum through the back of the dryer cabinet and caught the trailer on fire. To prove their design defect claim, the Camachos relied on testimony from Judd Clayton, an electrical engineer.
A brief explanation of how a Whirlpool Easy Clean 100 clothes dryer operates will aid in understanding the parties' contentions and the testimony.2
When the drying cycle is started, a drum inside the dryer cabinet begins rotating causing the clothes in it to tumble. Air is circulated through the drum, and a heating element is energized to heat the circulating air. At the end of the drying cycle, the heating element turns off and the dryer enters a cool-down cycle during which the drum continues rotating, the clothes continue tumbling, and the blower circulates unheated ambient air through the clothes. At the end of the cool-down cycle, the dryer automatically shuts off completely.
The dryer's air circulation system is designed so that a sealed blower fan draws air into and through the circulation system at a high speed and eventually expels the air through an exhaust vent at the rear of the dryer. The sealed blower fan is located in the lower back part of the cabinet. Air drawn into the circulation system passes through a heater box that is mounted on the lower rear part of the dryer opposite the blower assembly. The heater box is essentially an elongated rectangular-shaped metal box positioned vertically and open at its lower end so air from inside the dryer cabinet is drawn into the box at the lower end. The air travels vertically past the heater element, then continues vertically for several inches to a grill-covered inlet that opens into the dryer drum. The air passes through the inlet grill into the rotating dryer drum, flows through the dryer drum and tumbling clothes, exits through an outlet grill similar in configuration to the inlet grill, and passes into an enclosed lint chute assembly where it is drawn vertically down the back of the dryer cabinet to the blower assembly. When the air reaches the blower assembly at the base of the dryer, the lint is routed into a lint transport tube and carried vertically by airflow to a lint trap on top of the dryer. A screen in the lint trap filters lint from the circulating air. The circulating air then returns to the lint chute, travels back to the blower assembly, and is discharged out of the dryer through the exhaust vent by the blower. The exhaust of the Camachos' dryer was properly vented through the floor of the trailer.
Clayton's testimony was the only evidence of a design defect.3 He opined that the fire started when the clothes in the dryer drum were ignited by smoldering lint particles. Clayton's opinion was that the corrugated tube allowed lint to hang up on the inside of the tube and clog it.4 Even though both the blower assembly and the corrugated lint transport tube on the Camachos' dryer were consumed in the fire and not available for examination, Clayton was of the opinion that the tube was clogged and caused lint to back up into the blower housing assembly from where excessive amounts of it escaped by being blown through a gasket-like seal between the lint chute and the blower housing (the "lint chute seal") into the dryer cabinet. He theorized that the lint was forced through the lint chute seal, became airborne, and was drawn into the heater box. He reasoned that some airborne lint particles then passed through the heater box, were ignited as they passed by the heater element, and traveled vertically to the inlet grill. There they either entered the drum or came into contact with and ignited other lint that had become attached to the inlet grill, and then the newly-ignited lint entered the rotating drum. Basing his opinion on pretrial statements by Margarita that the dryer had shut off before she opened the dryer door, Clayton's opinion was that once the ignited lint was in the dryer drum, it landed in the drying, tumbling clothes,5 and smoldered there through the remainder of the drying and cool-down cycles and the period of time after the dryer shut off until Margarita opened the dryer door. He believed that when she opened the door, oxygen entered the drum and the increased oxygen level allowed the smoldering lint and clothes to burst into flames. His opinion was that the fire then escaped through the back of the dryer and ignited the Camachos' home.
Clayton also opined that a safer alternative design would have been to (1) use a smooth lint transport tube to prevent lint buildup in the tube, along with a different type of material for the lint chute seal and (2) mount a mesh lint filter of some nature over the airway entry to the heater box.
Whirlpool challenged almost every assertion made by the Camachos as to both liability and damages, including Clayton's assertion that lint particles ignited by the heating element ignited clothes in the dryer drum. Among its challenges, Whirlpool questioned whether there actually was fire inside the dryer drum and dryer cabinet independent of the fire that destroyed the Camachos' home. Whirlpool contended that there was no credible evidence of lint in the Camachos' dryer cabinet or in the dryer's heater element before the fire and that, even if blackened materials Clayton identified in a photograph as charred lint inside the cabinet had in fact been burnt lint, the charring was not evidence that the fire started inside the dryer cabinet or clothes drum because any lint present would have been charred by the intense heat of the fire, just as the rest of the trailer was.
Whirlpool objected to admission of Clayton's opinions as to design defect and safer alternative design on the ground that they were not reliable. It also challenged the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury submission of design defect on the basis that Clayton's testimony was the only support for the submission and his testimony was not reliable, was based on unfounded assumptions, and was...
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