Opinion ID: 2743961
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prevent or Reduce the Risk of Injury

Text: It is Casey’s burden to demonstrate that the alternative design “would have prevented or significantly reduced the risk of the claimant’s personal injury, property damage, or death.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 82.005(b)(1). Renfroe testified that, had Toyota used the alternative airbag described in PX 1198, Mrs. Casey “would have been . . . retained within the vehicle.” 11 This statement, however, is not sufficient evidence that the 10 Casey also relies on three other patents and patent applications. Because Renfroe testified that Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 1198 would assist most in discussing feasible alternate materials, and was the only patent application discussed by Renfroe, we limit our analysis to that exhibit. 11 We note that Renfroe never testified that, with the alternatively-designed airbag, Mrs. Casey would have survived the accident, just that she would have been “retained within the vehicle.” If coupled with evidence that the alternative design would have restrained Mrs. Casey within the vehicle, this opinion testimony combined with testimony from the medical examiner, Dr. William Rohr, that Mrs. Casey’s fatal injuries were sustained when she was partially ejected from the vehicle, would together be sufficient to show that the alternative 13 Case: 13-11119 Document: 00512808055 Page: 14 Date Filed: 10/20/2014 No. 13-11119 alternative design would have prevented or reduced the risk of injury because Renfroe did no testing to suggest that the presence of the alternative airbag would have changed the result in this case. Additionally, the testing described in the patent application was too far afield to constitute evidence that the alternative design would have reduced the risk of injury in this particular accident. Texas law expects that an alternative design be tested before a jury can reasonably conclude that the alternative would prevent or reduce the risk of injury. In Hodges, for example, an expert examined how the proposed alternative compared to the product used in the accident. 474 F.3d at 196-97. The expert examined how possible alternative designs performed compared to the latch at issue and reasoned that “the Eberhard latch is 25% thicker at the stress point and provides 12,000 pounds of additional holding strength compared to the Mack latch, all factors that, in his opinion, would have prevented it from breaking in the accident.” Id; see also Damian v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 352 S.W.3d 124, 151-52 (Tex. Ct. App. 2011) (finding that expert testimony was “no evidence of a safer alternative design” when the design “could have been tested but was not”); Gen. Motors Corp. v. Harper, 61 S.W.3d 118, 126 (Tex. Ct. App. 2001) (finding that patents “constituted no evidence of . . . a safer alternative design” because, among other things, “nothing in the patents compared the safety of the patented inventions with the restraint system used in Harper’s pickup”). design “would have prevented or significantly reduced the risk of the claimant’s personal injury, property damage, or death.” See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 82.005(b)(1). To provide evidence of this element, Renfroe need not testify directly that the alternative design would have caused Mrs. Casey to survive the accident. 14 Case: 13-11119 Document: 00512808055 Page: 15 Date Filed: 10/20/2014 No. 13-11119 Here, by contrast, Renfroe did not compare the Highlander airbag’s abrasion resistance to that of the proposed alternative airbag. Moreover, Renfroe admittedly did no testing to support his conclusion that the alternative design would have changed the outcome for Mrs. Casey in this accident. Renfroe does not explain why he believed that an airbag equipped with the stronger fabric would have withstood the forces in Mrs. Casey’s accident beyond simply asserting “that the air bag would have stayed inflated in this accident.” Instead, Casey, and Renfroe, rely on the patent application itself to provide the comparison between the Highlander’s airbag and the proposed alternative design. To be sure, an expert is not required to duplicate or repeat a detailed testing procedure described in a patent application that, standing alone, is evidence that the alternative design would have reduced the risk of injury in the applicable accident situation. But here, Renfroe’s reliance on the patent application’s tests was not evidence of the alternative design’s superior safety because the testing did not involve similar forces and factors as involved in Mrs. Casey’s rollover accident. The patent application describes three tests: two involving sliding or scrubbing a test bag against a gravel or concrete surface, and one in which a 25-pound weight was dropped on a test bag that lay on a surface covered with vehicle window glass. In his testimony, Renfroe referred to the patent application, specifically the third test, and opined that “[a] 25 pound weight being dropped from 5 and-a-half feet impacting a bag would be quite similar to what occurred in this particular case.” But Renfroe provides no support for his assumption that the testing conditions reflected in the patent application were equal to the forces at play in this accident. He did not calculate the actual forces imparted to the airbag in this accident. Crucially, none of the patent application’s tests involved an airbag installed in any vehicle, a simulated or 15 Case: 13-11119 Document: 00512808055 Page: 16 Date Filed: 10/20/2014 No. 13-11119 actual rollover, or the forces involved in Mrs. Casey’s accident. In Harper, plaintiff’s expert relied on a test conducted by others as evidence that a material described in a patent was a safer alternative design for a seatbelt webbing that would protect a vehicle’s occupants from neck injuries sustained from impact with a steering wheel in a frontal crash. 61 S.W.3d at 127. Because the test did not involve steering wheels or steering columns, the court held that the testing constituted “no evidence” that the alternative design would have protected the driver from the risk. Id. Similarly, here, we cannot credit as evidence of a safer alternative design Renfroe’s reliance on general tests of the proposed airbag material that were divorced from the conditions of this accident. See also Ford Motor Co. v. Wiles, 353 S.W.3d 198, 202-03 (Tex. Ct. App. 2011) (finding that plaintiff presented “no probative evidence to show there was ‘a safer alternative design’” where no applicable tests involving the purported safer alternative design were conducted and the expert did not testify that the forces involved in testing were similar to the forces exerted in the accident situation). In addition, there is no evidence in the record that the baseline material to which the patent applicants compared their invention was the same as the airbag used in the airbag installed in Mrs. Casey’s vehicle. While both used nylon, there is no evidence that the weave, coating, or other construction of the Toyota airbag was the same as the baseline used in the patent’s tests. In sum, because the patent application did not test the alternative material under similar accident conditions, Casey has failed to show that using that material would have prevented or reduced the risk of injury in Mrs. Casey’s accident.