Court Opinion

ID: 9768395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 06:00:58.662721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:40.478758
License: Public Domain

HECHT, Justice,
concurring.
The dissenting opinion uses established principles of statutory construction to prove, very convincingly I think, that TEX.RBV.Crv. StatAnn. art. 6701d, § 107C(j), means exactly what it says: “Use or nonuse of a safety belt is not admissible in a civil trial.” One effect of these simple words is to preclude an action against the manufacturer of a safety belt for damages resulting from a defect in the belt which kept it from restraining the occupant of a vehicle properly. While I believe that the logic of the dissenting opinion points to this conclusion, I agree with the Court that the Legislature cannot reasonably be thought to have intended this result. As the Court observes, that the Legislature would absolve seat belt manufacturers from products liability claims in a subsection of a traffic statute is simply too much to believe.
Thus I concur in the result reached by the Court. I cannot, however, join its opinion. The Court attempts to justify its conclusion using the rule of construction that language must be construed in its context. The rule, though sound, is useless in this case, for there is nothing in § 107C, or even in article 6701d, that makes subsection (j) ambiguous. Section 107C(j) should be read in context, but doing so does not help. The pretense that somehow it does is, in my view, as incredible as the conclusion demanded by the logic of the dissenting opinion. The real principle at work here is this: in some circumstances, words, no matter how plain, will not be construed to cause a result the Legislature almost certainly could not have intended. See Cramer v. Sheppard, 140 Tex. 271, 167 S.W.2d 147, 155 (1942).