Am. Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. Milburn

696 S.W.3d 612

AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO., INC., Petitioner,

v.Sarah MILBURN, Respondent

No. 21-1097

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued September 13, 2023

OPINION DELIVERED: June 28, 2024

Rehearing Denied September 27, 2024

On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas

John Blaise Gsanger, Houston, Laura Gutierrez Tamez, San Antonio, for Amicus Curiae Texas Trial Lawyers Association.

Catherine L. Eschbach, Houston, Michael A. Tilghman II, Charles H. Haake, Lauren Sheets Jarrell, Jonathan D. Urick, H. Sherman Joyce, William R. Peterson, for Amici Curiae The American Tort Re- form Association, The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, The National Association of Manufacturers, The Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Michael W. Eady, Austin, Ruth G. Malinas, San Antonio, Samantha McCoy, for Amicus Curiae Texas Association of Defense Counsel.

Rachel Anne Ekery, Houston, Wallace B. Jefferson, Austin, Kurt C. Kern, Plano, Yesenia Cardenas-Colenso, William J. Boyce, Scott P. Stolley, for Petitioner.

George S. Christian, for Amicus Curiae Texas Civil Justice League.

Caleb Miller, Fort Worth, Brent R. Walker, Dallas, Jeffrey S. Levinger, James L. Mitchell, Charla G. Aldous, for Respondent.

Robert M. Randy Roach Jr., Houston, Manuel Lopez, for Amicus Curiae The International Association of Defense Counsel.

Joy M. Soloway, for Amicus Curiae Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc.

Justice Lehrmann delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Blacklock, Justice Busby, Justice Bland, Justice Huddle, and Justice Young joined.

In this products liability action involving an automobile manufacturer’s alleged negligent design of a seat-belt system, the primary issue presented concerns the statutory rebuttable presumption of nonliability that attaches when a product’s design complies with applicable federal safety standards. The trial court rendered judgment on the jury’s verdict in the plaintiff’s favor, and the court of appeals affirmed. The court of appeals held, among other things, that legally sufficient evidence supports the jury’s findings that the presumption of nonliability applied and that the presumption was rebutted. We hold as a matter of law that the presumption both applied and was not rebutted. Because that holding is dispositive, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and render judgment for the manufacturer without addressing the remaining issues.

I. Background

A. The Seat-Belt System

The standard seat-belt system in motor vehicles is a Type 2 system that integrates the shoulder belt and lap belt into one continuous piece of webbing with three points of attachment. Typically, the shoulder belt attaches to the car’s frame or seat, the lap belt attaches to the car’s floor or seat, and the passenger creates the third point of restraint by pulling the belt across her body and latching it into a buckle next to her hip.

The seat-belt system at issue here is a ceiling-mounted detachable Type 2 anchor system, which is used in the third-row middle seat of the 2011 Honda Odyssey, among many other vehicles. The belt in the 2011 Odyssey is mounted to the ceiling on the right side of the middle seat and has a detachable anchor that latches into a minibuckle at the right hip. When the anchor is attached, the passenger creates the third point of restraint by buckling the belt at her left hip. But if the passenger fastens the belt in that way when the anchor is not attached, and the passenger fails to reattach the anchor, the passenger’s lap will remain unbelted. A key-like object is required to detach the anchor.

The reason for the detachability feature is to allow the seat belt to retract into the ceiling, which in turn facilitates the rear seat’s folding flat into the floor pan, significantly increasing the amount of cargo space without risking damage to the seat belt. Generally, the anchor is intended to remain connected when the seat is in the upright position. The Odyssey’s owner’s manual contains warnings about using the seat belt when the anchor is detached, and an additional warning label is located on the seat belt itself. It is undisputed that the detachable-anchor system used in the rear middle seat of the 2011 Odyssey complies with mandatory federal regulations, as the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards expressly allow that system to be used in passenger cars manufactured after September 1, 2007, in the middle seating position of a seat for which the seat back can be folded nearly or fully flush with the floor. See 49 C.F.R. § 571.208, S4.2.7.4.

B. The Accident

On the evening of November 14, 2015, Sarah Milburn went out with five friends to a bar in Uptown Dallas. Shortly after midnight, the group decided to meet up with other friends at a different bar a short distance away. A member of the group called an Uber, and Uber driver Arian Yusufzai picked them up in a 2011 Odyssey. Milburn sat in the third-row middle seat. That seat’s detachable anchor was not latched, and the webbing was retracted into the ceiling-mounted retractor. Milburn fastened her seat belt by pulling the belt down from the ceiling across her body and attaching it to the buckle at her left hip, leaving her lap unbelted.¹

As the Odyssey entered an intersection, a pickup truck hit the minivan on the passenger side, causing it to overturn and come to rest on its roof.² The impact caused Milburn to move forward and to the right until her neck was "clotheslined" by the shoulder-strap portion of the belt. While the other five passengers exited the van unassisted, paramedics extracted Milburn on a backboard and took her to the hospital. Milburn, who was twenty-three years old at the time of the accident, suffered severe injuries to her cervical vertebrae that rendered her a quadriplegic.

C. The Lawsuit

Milburn sued Honda, Uber Technologies and two of its subsidiaries, Yusufzai, and the Odyssey’s owner.³ Before trial, Milburn settled with all defendants except Honda and amended her petition to assert only product liability claims against Honda. Milburn alleged that the Odyssey was "defective and unreasonably dangerous in that it was not adequately designed, manufactured or marketed to minimize the risk of injury." More specifically, she alleged that Honda was negligent in (1) designing the Odyssey "with a third-row center seatbelt system which an ordinary passenger would likely not be able [to] use as designed because the intended method of use was dangerously unclear, confusing, counter intuitive, and misleading"; (2) failing to adequately test and evaluate the usability and safety of the seat belt system; and (3) failing to provide adequate warnings and instructions.⁴

Honda raised several affirmative defenses in its answer. Relevant here, Honda first pleaded that the Odyssey’s compliance with mandatory federal safety standards gave rise to a presumption of nonliability under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 82.008. That statute entitles a manufacturer to a rebuttable presumption that it is not liable in a products liability action based on a product’s design if the manufacturer establishes that the design complied with applicable federal safety standards or regulations "that governed the product risk that allegedly caused harm." Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 82.008(a). The claimant may then rebut that presumption by establishing that the standards or regulations "were inadequate to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or damage." Id. § 82.008(b)(1).

As an additional affirmative defense, Honda pleaded that, under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 33, its liability should be reduced by the "percentage of responsibility" attributable to Milburn, the settling defendants, and the driver of the pickup truck. As to the Uber entities specifically, Honda alleged that their negligence, negligent undertaking, and fraudulent and negligent misrepresentations were a producing cause of Milburn’s injury. Milburn specially excepted to Honda’s pleadings relating to the Uber entities’ proportionate responsibility under Chapter 33, arguing that (1) submission of the Uber entities for comparative apportionment would be improper because Uber’s liability was derivative of another tortfeasor (Yusufzai) and thus (2) all evidence regarding the allegations against the Uber entities should be excluded as irrelevant. Milburn then moved for partial summary judgment, arguing no viable legal claim would permit the submission of the Uber entities in a proportionate-responsibility question. The trial court granted the motion.

The parties proceeded to a three-week jury trial. Milburn presented two expert witnesses to testify about the seat-belt system’s design. Joellen Gill, a human factors engineering consultant,⁵ testified that the seat-belt system’s design was defective from a human factors perspective because it was foreseeable that owners would not reliably maintain the belt in the anchored position and that passengers would neither fasten the unanchored belt correctly nor recognize that they were belted incorrectly. And she concluded that Honda did not adequately mitigate those foreseeable risks. In so opining, Gill explained that her conclusions were supported by two "usability studies" conducted by Milburn’s counsel in which fifty out of fifty-three people asked to fasten an unanchored seat belt in a 2011 Odyssey’s rear center seat did so incorrectly. Honda sought to exclude Gill’s testimony on the grounds that she was not qualified and that her testimony was unreliable; Honda further sought to exclude the usability studies as unreliable and unscientific. The trial court denied those requests.

Milburn also presented the expert testimony of Steven Meyer, a mechanical engineer specializing in automotive safety, who concluded that the likelihood of the seat belt’s incorrect usage, weighed against the utility of the additional cargo space, rendered the system...