The Texas Supreme Court threw out a nearly $26 million judgment against Honda on Friday in a case brought by a young woman who was paralyzed when a ceiling-mounted detachable seatbelt system improperly restrained her during a rollover accident.
In a 7-2 decision, the court said a Texas law shields American Honda Motor Co. from liability because the 2011 Honda Odyssey seatbelt design met federal safety regulations.
Writing for the majority, Justice Debra Lehrmann keyed in on a Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code provision that was enacted in 2003 as part of a major effort that year to limit lawsuits by Republicans who had gained control of the Texas House for the first time since Reconstruction. Supporters of the legislation said they were responding to complaints that manufacturers and sellers were being held liable in products liability cases even though the products complied with federal safety standards.
The law allows the presumption of nonliability to be rebutted by establishing the federal standards were inadequate to protect the public, which the court said the plaintiff failed to do.
“In enacting Section 82.008, the Legislature made a policy decision that manufacturers at risk of liability for injuries caused by an allegedly defective design are entitled to rely on a federal agency’s cogent determination that the pertinent risks associated with that design are not unreasonable. [The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] made such a determination with respect to the safety standard authorizing dual-detachable seat-belt systems in some vehicles and seating positions,” Lehrmann said.
“Absent a comprehensive review of the various factors and tradeoffs NHTSA considered in adopting that safety standard, as a general matter neither we nor a jury can deem a particular regulation ‘inadequate’ to prevent an unreasonable risk of harm to the public as a whole.”
Citing a lack of evidence of others being injured by the seatbelt system, Lehrmann said the decision does “not foreclose the possibility that subsequent developments could demonstrate that the standard was no longer adequate to protect the public.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Phillip Devine, joined by Justice Jeff Boyd, said the evidence is legally sufficient to support the Dallas County jury’s findings of defective design and safety-standard inadequacy.
“But even if the Court’s newly adopted hurdles were proper, this grievously injured young woman should — at the very least — be given a fair opportunity to clear them. The Court’s unwillingness to remand for a new trial suggests an awareness that these statutory embellishments would be impossible to satisfy, which effectively converts the legislatively mandated ‘rebuttable’ presumption into one that is conclusive,” Devine said.
Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote a concurring opinion joined by Justice Brett Busby. Blacklock said he agreed with the dissent that a jury has wide latitude to disagree with the federal agency’s decision but said Milburn did not meet her burden to convince the jury that the regulation was inadequate.
Court watchers were following the case for the novel issues it raised about the interplay between state and federal law, particularly federal regulatory law. Many also were watching to see how the court would deal with a so-called “nuclear verdict” decided by a jury who heard dueling experts during a three-week trial.
The Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Texas Association of Defense Counsel submitted amicus briefs, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Texas Civil Justice League and others.
A night that would end in tragedy for 23-year-old Sarah Milburn started on Nov. 14, 2015, with Milburn and five friends at a bar in Uptown Dallas. Shortly after midnight, the group called an Uber to meet up with friends at a different bar.
Milburn sat in the third-row middle seat of the minivan and 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. That model, according to court documents, is equipped with a ceiling-mounted detachable anchor seatbelt system. It differs from traditional designs because the detachable anchor allows the seat belt to disengage from the seat and retract into the ceiling, and if the belt isn’t latched into the anchor it leaves the passenger’s lap unbelted.
According to a police report, the driver ran a red light and was hit by a pickup truck. The minivan overturned and came to rest on its roof.
“The impact caused Milburn to move forward and to the right until her neck was ‘clotheslined’ by the shoulder-strap portion of the belt,” Lehrmann said. While the other passengers exited the vehicle unassisted, Milburn had to be extracted by paramedics and suffered severe injuries to her cervical vertebrae that rendered her a quadriplegic.
Milburn sued Honda, Uber Technologies and two of its subsidiaries, the driver and the Odyssey’s owner. Before trial, she settled with all defendants except 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.”
At trial, Milburn presented expert witnesses who testified that the seat-belt system’s design was defective 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.
Honda’s experts testified that the system was well designed and widely used and that an alternative design would interfere with the ability to retract the seat into the floor for cargo space.
The jury attributed 63 percent of the responsibility to Honda and awarded Milburn $25.9 million. The Fifth Court of Appeals upheld the award in November 2021.
Lehrmann said the court was guided by its 2014 decision in Kia Motors Corp. v. Ruiz, an airbag case cited by both parties. In that case, the court held that the presumption of nonliability did not apply because the regulation had no bearing on the risk associated with the alleged product defect.
“However, unlike the air-bag regulations reviewed in Kia Motors, the seat-belt regulations are not limited to how seat belts perform in a crash; they also contemplate equipment types, locations, and designs for various seating positions. And they expressly authorize the precise design that Milburn alleges is defective: a system with a release mechanism that detaches both the lap and shoulder portion at the lower (or upper) anchorage point.”
Honda is represented by Wallace B. Jefferson of Alexander Dubose & Jefferson. Milburn is represented by Jeffrey S. Levinger.
The case number is 21-1097.