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American Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. Sarah Milburn, John Milburn, and Carolyn Milburn ( 2024 )


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  •           Supreme Court of Texas
    ══════════
    No. 21-1097
    ══════════
    American Honda Motor Co., Inc.,
    Petitioner,
    v.
    Sarah Milburn,
    Respondent
    ═══════════════════════════════════════
    On Petition for Review from the
    Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas
    ═══════════════════════════════════════
    JUSTICE BLACKLOCK, joined by Justice Busby, concurring.
    I agree with the dissent that the Legislature has left it to Texas
    juries, not federal bureaucrats, to determine in products-liability cases
    whether “federal safety standards or regulations applicable to [a]
    product were inadequate to protect the public from unreasonable risks
    of injury or damage.”    TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 82.008(b)(1).
    Under this statute, the fact finder has wide latitude to answer an
    unusual question, one that is neither a conventional question of fact nor
    a conventional question of law.         Whether a federal regulation is
    “adequate” or “inadequate” to protect the public is really a question of
    policy and politics—which makes judicial application of this statute
    somewhat confounding.
    I see no way to separate the question of a regulation’s “adequacy”
    from the political value judgments of the person answering the question.
    A very lenient seat-belt-design regulation might look perfectly adequate
    to a juror who values liberty and lowering costs much more highly than
    he values safety. For decades, American cars were steel death traps
    compared to today’s cars, and there were few seat-belt laws at all, much
    less federal regulation of the minute details of their design. Cars were
    more dangerous, but they were also cheaper and simpler. The world
    kept turning.     Our government later decided to impose greater
    regulation in the name of safety, but many jurors might believe that the
    era of little or no regulation was perfectly “adequate.”
    On the other hand, a juror who values safety much more highly
    than liberty might conclude that any regulation that does not go as far
    as reasonably possible to ensure maximum safety for every passenger is
    inadequate—even if imposing the regulation would heighten costs and
    inconvenience drivers. This juror might conclude that a seat-belt-design
    regulation is not “adequate to protect the public” unless the car is
    prevented from moving if there is weight on the seat but the seat belt is
    not correctly fastened. Such a regulation might have protected Ms.
    Milburn and many others. But it also might impose significant costs on
    manufacturers and consumers, and it would surely be an impractical
    inconvenience for many drivers. How do we balance those competing
    values? One juror might call this strict regulation the product of a
    2
    nanny state gone wild, while another juror might say we are crazy not
    to do it if it saves one life. Most jurors would fall somewhere in between.
    Are any of these hypothetical jurors wrong? The only way for a
    court to say so would be for the court to make political value judgments
    of its own about the proper way to balance the competing interests at
    stake. For better or worse, when it comes to seat belts, such political
    value judgments are generally entrusted to the federal government’s
    National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The federal agency’s
    balancing of the myriad values and interests at play results in a
    promulgated     federal    regulation.       That    regulation     affects
    products-liability litigation in Texas, because the Legislature has
    created a rebuttable presumption that a vehicle manufacturer is not
    liable if it complied with the applicable federal standards.            Id.
    § 82.008(a).
    The presumption is rebutted, however, if the “federal safety
    standards or regulations applicable to [a] product were inadequate to
    protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or damage.” Id.
    § 82.008(b)(1). For the foregoing reasons, I understand this provision to
    authorize the fact finder to substitute his own political judgment about
    the regulation’s “adequacy” for that of NHTSA. It feels odd to call this
    essentially political judgment a “fact question,” but that seems to be the
    statutory design, and so courts must apply it as best we can. I therefore
    agree with the dissent that a jury has very wide latitude to disagree with
    the federal agency’s decision and, on that basis alone, to override the
    presumption of non-liability.    Assuming the jury has been given a
    sufficient evidentiary predicate by which to second-guess the agency’s
    3
    decision (more on that below), a jury’s disagreement with the agency’s
    decision should be essentially unreviewable.           A court cannot
    second-guess a jury’s disagreement with a federal agency’s value-laden
    policy judgments without imposing the court’s own value-laden policy
    judgments. I see nothing in this statute that would authorize a court to
    do so.
    Despite my agreement with many of the broad strokes argued by
    the dissent, I nevertheless concur in the Court’s judgment and its
    opinion for two reasons. First, unlike the dissent, I do not read the
    Court’s opinion to limit the grounds on which a plaintiff can demonstrate
    a regulation’s inadequacy.     See post at 3–4 (Devine, J., dissenting)
    (suggesting that the Court leaves open only two ways of demonstrating
    regulatory inadequacy). The Court does say that regulatory inadequacy
    can be shown by poking holes in the agency’s decision-making process
    or by showing that new information has come to light since the
    regulation was enacted. Ante at 28–29, 33–34. But the Court never says
    these are the only two ways to rebut the presumption. Instead, the
    Court acknowledges that a plaintiff might argue simply that the federal
    agency “got it wrong”—that is, that the agency did an “inadequate” job
    balancing the many competing values and interests at stake, and the
    jury should therefore disagree with the agency’s judgments and override
    the presumption. Id. at 30, 34 n.23. I read the Court’s opinion to
    correctly leave this line of argument open, and I would not join the
    Court’s opinion unless it did so.
    Second, I agree with the Court on the following crucial point:
    “Absent a comprehensive review of the various factors and tradeoffs
    4
    NHTSA considered in adopting [the] 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.” Id. at 32–33 (footnotes omitted). Many, many considerations go
    into the creation of a federal regulation of this nature, and passenger
    safety is just one of them.     Other obvious considerations are cost,
    convenience, and practicality. Surely there are others. A fact finder
    cannot validly judge a federal agency’s balancing of these values unless
    he knows something about how the regulatory process works and has a
    sense of the many conflicting considerations and competing values—
    safety just one among them—that contributed to the promulgated
    regulation.
    Honda’s lead argument in this Court is not that the jury has no
    authority to conclude that the federal agency “got it wrong.” Instead,
    Honda’s argument is that we cannot validly ask a jury to say whether a
    federal agency “got it wrong” unless the jury has been informed about
    the regulatory process and the many competing considerations it
    entails. As Honda puts it, “a qualified regulatory expert would need to
    explain why, in the context of the entire regulatory history and the
    delicate balance between absolute safety and commercial feasibility, the
    agency’s determination was . . . ‘inadequate.’” Pet. Brief at 18. I agree.
    Here, the plaintiff’s two experts focused on establishing the
    defectiveness of the seat belt’s design. Neither expert aided the jury in
    understanding the complex landscape confronting NHTSA when it made
    its decision. And without such testimony, there is no evidentiary basis
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    for a finding that, all things considered, the regulation is “inadequate to
    protect the public.” TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 82.008(b)(1).
    By focusing on the regulation’s failure to promote passenger
    safety as strongly as it could have, the plaintiff’s experts did essentially
    the opposite of what was required. They encouraged the jury to condemn
    the regulation based on the singular consideration of passenger safety.
    Their burden instead was to convince the jury that, balancing passenger
    safety with the many other relevant factors bearing on its decision,
    NHTSA’s regulation was, all things considered, “inadequate.” Because
    the plaintiff never presented such a case to the jury despite Honda’s
    consistent argument that this was required, I agree with the Court that
    the jury’s finding of regulatory inadequacy cannot stand.
    With these points noted, I respectfully concur.
    James D. Blacklock
    Justice
    OPINION FILED: June 28, 2024
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Document Info

Docket Number: 05-19-00850-CV

Filed Date: 6/28/2024

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 7/3/2024