Court Opinion

ID: 9667625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:51:01.506068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:39.384996
License: Public Domain

*54DOGGETT, Justice,
dissenting.
Once again the majority has rewritten a statute to suit its fancy. See Rose v. Doctors Hosp. Facilities, 801 S.W.2d 841, 852 (Tex.1990) (Doggett, J., dissenting); Am-berboy v. Societe de Banque Privee, 831 S.W.2d 793, 798 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting). Representing a significant revision of the Texas Tort Claims Act, today’s opinion effectively redrafts the statute as follows:
the property damage, personal injury or death arises from the [employee’s] operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle or motor-driven equipment....
Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code § 101.021(1)(A), as modified by page 51. By adding one new word that the Legislature never chose to include in its enactment, the majority bars Monica’s recovery. This “legislative” action by the majority has no legitimate basis in either law or public policy.
The perceived need to interject the word “employee’s” into the waiver provision as enacted by the Legislature has two asserted bases. The first is:
The phrase, “arises from”, requires a nexus between the injury negligently caused by a governmental employee and the operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle or piece of equipment.
Id. at 51. “Nexus,” a term not found in the statute, means a “connection” or “link.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 797 (1989). Phrases are like links in a chain — they connect what comes immediately before with what comes immediately after. Rather than taking the links in order, the majority uses “arises from” to connect the words following (“operation or use”) with another term (“employee’s”) some distance away in the chain. “Arises from” does require a nexus, between the two phrases on either side: “the property damage, personal injury, or death” and the “operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle or motor-driven equipment.”
Proof of this connection, however, is not enough. The statute also requires that the “property damage, personal injury, and death [be] proximately caused by the ... negligence of an employee acting within the scope of employment.” Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code § 101.021(1). This Court recognized the two-fold nature of the required showing in Mount Pleasant Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Lindburg, 766 S.W.2d 208, 211 (Tex.1989):
In order for a claim to fall within the limited waiver of sovereign immunity, the finder of fact must determine that the damages suffered were “proximately caused by the act or omission or the negligence of an employee ... [and arose] from the operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle_” Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 101.021.
(Bracketed language and ellipses in the original).
The second asserted basis for modifying the statutory language is that “[t]his requirement is consistent with the clear intent of the Act that the waiver of sovereign immunity be limited.” At 51. The two-prong test of the statute as written limits the scope of the waiver: if there is no negligence by an employee, there is no liability; if the injury does not arise from operation or use of a motor vehicle, no waiver occurs. Today’s “nexus” serves to limit the waiver beyond the legislative intent embodied by its choice of language. The Legislature modified “negligence” with the phrase “of an employee.” It did not similarly limit “operation or use.” Ordinarily this court does not “insert additional words into a statutory provision.” Hunter v. Fort Worth Capital Corp., 620 S.W.2d 547, 552 (Tex.1981); see also Damon v. Cornett, 781 S.W.2d 597, 599 (Tex. 1989) (refusing to insert the word “former” before “member of the Legislature” in interpreting Texas Constitution). It is thus not surprising that the majority cites no authority for this latest bit of judicial intrusion.1
In addition to its legislative handiwork the majority offers a number of excuses *55for barring Monica’s recovery. Despite having concluded that the governmental employee must be using or operating the school bus, the court nonetheless proceeds to analyze situations that exclusively involve the use of the bus by students. The majority concedes that “ ‘[t]here is no sound reason why the acts of loading and unloading students on and off school buses should not be considered a part of the transportation process.’ ” At 52. The opinion nevertheless focuses on why Monica was using the bus rather than whether she was using it. Apparently Monica would be able to maintain suit had she entered the bus for certain purposes suggested by the majority: “returning to her seat, or putting something on the bus, or retrieving an article from the bus, or preparing to leave.” Id. at 52. Why should it matter under this statute if she got on the bus to fetch her coat or to close the door? Drawing such fine distinctions is supported by neither statute, precedent, nor logic, and is certainly not appropriate in a summary judgment context.
The majority emphasizes that “[t]he bus was parked, empty.... [and] nothing more than the place where [injury occurred].” The Texas Tort Claims Act does not require that the vehicle being used also be in motion nor that the conductor yell “All aboard.” What the majority is really saying is that Monica’s injury is unrelated to the bus. But clearly, without the bus there would have been no injury. The relationship between the injury and the vehicle clearly meets the traditional definition of cause in fact, recited time and time again by the Texas courts — “a substantial factor in bringing about the injury and without which no harm would have occurred.” Havner v. E-Z Mart Stores, Inc., 825 S.W.2d 456 (Tex.1992); Missouri Pac. Ry. Co. v. American Statesman, 552 S.W.2d 99, 103 (Tex.1977). In none of the cases relied upon by the court was the physical injury actually caused by contact with the bus.2
Even under today’s rewriting of the statute, Monica should be entitled to present her claims to a Texas jury. Monica’s injuries are not segregated in this record. They do not all appear to stem from the blow to her head:
The bus driver came up, got on the bus, and started the engine. When he did, a buzzer signaled that the back door was open. The driver told Monica to close the door, but as she reached out to do it, she passed out. [She was told by a fellow student] that she had fallen to the ground.
At 51. At the time of the fall, the ignition of the bus was engaged. Had the door not been open, and had Monica not been instructed by the driver, a governmental employee, to close it, she would not have sustained the fall. By reciting these critical facts but failing to discuss their legal effect, the majority revises the record to fit the theory of disposition it has created. Contrary to Mount Pleasant, 766 S.W.2d *56at 211, the majority has taken a question of fact and decided it as a matter of law.
Without prejudging how a jury would evaluate Monica’s conduct, I believe it should also have the opportunity to evaluate the driver’s conduct in permitting students to use the emergency exit contrary to his training. Although perhaps unable to anticipate every type of conduct in which a busload of students may engage, a driver does have a responsibility to ensure passenger safety by applying job training3 and enforcing clearly defined governmental policies. Regrettably, today’s action denies any jury consideration of whether an act or omission of the driver in the use of a vehicle was one cause of the student’s injuries. There is simply no summary judgment evidence showing that as a matter of law Monica’s conduct was the sole cause of the accident.
Why she may not seek redress under today’s opinion is a mystery that has only one explanation. The true message of the majority is that there is no need to trouble jurors in Orange County with the tale of a giggling girl when some judges in Austin can save them the bother and immunize the government from the claims of whomever it injures. Those with confidence in the jury system must reject the majority’s “suspicion and distrust of the concept of ordinary Texans, constituting a cross-section of their individual communities, assembling as a jury to make difficult determinations.” Reagan v. Vaughn, 804 S.W.2d 463, 491 (Tex.1991) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting). The Texas Tort Claims Act should be interpreted reasonably to protect the public, rather than misconstrued to prohibit jury consideration of facts subject to conflicting interpretations.
MAUZY, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. Nor has this limitation been previously read into the waiver of sovereign immunity contained in section 101.021(2), which provides that a governmental unit may be liable for “personal injury and death so caused by a condition or use of tangible personal or real property_" For example, in Smith v. University of Texas, 664 S.W.2d 180 (Tex.App. — Austin 1984, writ ref’d *55n.r.e.), an injury sustained from a shot-put thrown at an athletic meet was found actionable under the Tort Claims Act. Rejecting the University’s argument that the harm was caused not by an employee’s use of the property but by the nonemployee who threw the shot-put, the court held “that a fact issue exists as to whether the University’s employee ... [was] negligent in the use of tangible property by failing to properly supervise the same in the conduct of the shot-put event.” Id. at 188. Monica has levied precisely the same claim here — that the bus driver was negligent in the use of the school bus by failing to properly supervise the manner in which students entered and exited.

. In Hopkins v. Spring Indep. Sch. Dist., 736 S.W.2d 617 (Tex.1987), the injuries did not arise from the use of a motor vehicle but from a seizure a student suffered as a result of a head injury sustained earlier in the day at school after she was pushed into a stack of chairs. Id. at 617, 619. Similarly, in Estate of Garza v. McAllen Indep. Sch. Dist., 613 S.W.2d 526 (Tex. Civ.App. — Beaumont 1981, writ refd n.r.e.), the student’s knife injuries were unrelated to the bus. In Naranjo v. Southwest Indep. Sch. Dist., Ill S.W.2d 190 (Tex.App. — San Antonio 1989, writ denied), the court found that the "plaintiff was not injured by the motor vehicle itself. Rather, his injury was the result of the gasoline which spattered from the cup in his hand." Id, at 192. In Pierson v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 698 S.W.2d 377 (Tex.App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 1985, writ refd n.r.e.), the injury did not arise from the use of a motor vehicle but from igniting a gun powder-like substance with a cigarette while on a trailer bed pulled by a truck. Id. at 379.

. Although HFISD trains its bus drivers to restrict rear exit use solely to emergencies and requiries that they instruct their passengers on the safest means of departing, Monica and other band members had been regularly permitted to use the rear door for ingress and egress. On the day of the accident, the driver explicitly told the students they could make careful use of this entryway.