Court Opinion

ID: 9404771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-25 14:08:25.198565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:17.020514
License: Public Domain

Supreme Court of Texas
                             ══════════
                              No. 21-0496
                             ══════════

                Houston Area Safety Council, Inc. and
                     Psychemedics Corporation,
                               Petitioners,

                                     v.

                         Guillermo M. Mendez,
                               Respondent

   ═══════════════════════════════════════
              On Petition for Review from the
       Court of Appeals for the First District of Texas
   ═══════════════════════════════════════

       JUSTICE YOUNG, joined by Justice Blacklock, concurring.

       This case turns on the threshold inquiry for any common-law
negligence claim: whether a duty exists. To make that determination, the
Court today adheres to our precedents by applying the Phillips factors.
But at least for a case like this, we should not need those factors. Drug
testing is a familiar area of life and law that, in many respects, is already
highly regulated. Judicial meddling with the careful balances that the
other branches can strike and have struck is unnecessary and improper.
       I nonetheless join the Court’s thorough, well-reasoned, and well-
written opinion that declines to recognize a duty in this context. No party
has asked us to revisit those precedents. I address this case in a separate
writing, however, for three reasons. First, I explain why we can reach
today’s result wholly aside from the Phillips factors. Second, I want to
clarify that while the Phillips factors were a salutary and important
improvement in the law when they were adopted, they do not have the
ability to predictably constrain judicial adventurism. A judge who wants
to impose a duty or create a new cause of action can readily do so and
claim fidelity to Phillips—and, because the factors are amorphous, that
claim cannot readily be rebutted. And third, I emphasize that I am not
at all antagonistic to the common law. To the contrary, my approach
would ensure that the common law plays its important but properly
limited role in our large legal superstructure. In other words, we honor
the common law by applying it where it exists, reading other laws
(including the Constitution) in light of established common-law
principles, and—importantly—declining to expand it where there is no
vacuum for it to fill.
       In short, I again suggest that our jurisprudence may benefit from
a different approach when we respond to requests to enlarge the common
law of torts.1
                                       I
       One feature of today’s case is, in my view, dispositive: that the
alleged duty would arise in a highly familiar and significantly regulated

       1See also, e.g., Elephant Ins. Co. v. Kenyon, 644 S.W.3d 137, 155–60
(Tex. 2022) (Young, J., concurring); Am. Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Arce, ___ S.W.3d ___,
2023 WL 3134718, at *17 (Tex. Apr. 28, 2023) (Young, J., concurring). I expand
upon those observations here because this case provides a prime example of
when the Phillips factors can be less than helpful and may in fact cause more
harm than good.

                                       2
context. Testing for drugs—within the broader context of drug abuse and
detection more generally—is not some remote area of life that federal and
state law have never contemplated. Over fifty years ago, the President
declared that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.”2 It is no secret
that the improper use of drugs remains a widespread danger that has
generated a host of public-policy responses. Nor is it a secret that drug
use in some contexts—especially by those in positions capable of affecting
public safety—is an even higher priority. Quite relevant here, both
Congress and this State’s legislature have passed laws that encourage
drug-free workplaces. See Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988, Pub. L. No.
100-690, 102 Stat. 4304 (codified as amended at 41 U.S.C. §§ 8101–8106)
(instituting requirements for federal contractors and grant recipients);
Tex. Lab. Code § 21.120 (stating that declining to employ individuals who
illegally use or possess controlled substances does not constitute unlawful
employment discrimination).
       One specific response to drug use has been an emphasis on
workplace drug testing, especially in fields with heightened safety
concerns. To address drug testing in such employment contexts, a broad
range of laws and regulations have been enacted by both the federal3 and

       2Richard Nixon, President of the U.S., Remarks About an Intensified
Program for Drug Abuse Prevention and Control (June 17, 1971), https://www.
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-about-intensified-program-for-drug-
abuse-prevention-and-control.
       3  See, e.g., 49 U.S.C. § 5331 (public transportation); id. § 20140
(railroads); id. § 31306 (commercial motor vehicles); id. § 45102 (aviation); 51
U.S.C. § 31102 (NASA employees and contractors); 14 C.F.R. pt. 120 (aviation);
49 C.F.R. pt. 40 (DOT drug-testing procedures); id. pt. 199 (pipeline facilities);
id. pt. 219 (railroads); id. pt. 382 (commercial motor vehicles).

                                        3
state4 governments. These enactments usually provide protection for
employees, whether through an appeal process, by establishing required
testing procedures, or both. See, e.g., Mission Petroleum Carriers, Inc. v.
Solomon, 106 S.W.3d 705, 713–15 (Tex. 2003) (discussing protections for
transportation workers under specified federal drug-testing regulations);
Tex. Lab. Code § 207.026(d) (requiring appeal process in unemployment-
benefits context); Tex. Health & Safety Code § 555.022(b) (requiring
appeal process for employees of state-supported living centers). In this
case, Psychemedics points to regulatory requirements for laboratories
addressing licensing, safety, and testing quality. The record indicates
that Psychemedics is licensed or certified both by Texas (as well as other
states) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The
degree to which policymaking efforts have already been directed toward
workplace drug testing is unsurprising. The briefing and the Court’s
opinion, see ante at 12–13, merely confirm what is widely known.
       Nothing suggests that legislation cannot add (or subtract) more
or different requirements as needed, including private causes of action
against drug-testing laboratories. Likewise, as noted above, the reason

       4 See, e.g., Tex. Health & Safety Code § 242.052 (convalescent and
nursing facilities); id. § 555.022 (state-supported living centers for those with
intellectual disabilities); Tex. Occ. Code § 2303.161 (vehicle-storage facilities);
id. § 2308.158 (towing operators); Tex. Hum. Res. Code § 42.057 (DFPS-
licensed or certified residential childcare facilities); Tex. Lab. Code § 207.026
(unemployment benefits for certain categories of workers); 26 Tex. Admin. Code
§ 554.423 (providing model drug-testing policy, including appeal process, for
nursing facilities that choose to drug-test employees); id. § 745.4151 (providing
model drug-testing policy for residential childcare facilities, including an appeal
process and minimum standards for testing methods); 16 Tex. Admin. Code
§ 85.725 (establishing minimum standards for drug testing for employees of
vehicle-storage facilities and detailing reporting and reviewing procedures); id.
§ 86.710 (same for towing operators).

                                        4
that drug testing is so prevalent and pervasively regulated in some
contexts is because public safety requires it. Consider, for example, an
airline pilot who should have been flagged as under the influence, but
who instead received a false-negative result. This one mistake could
prove fatal to dozens or hundreds of lives.
      Importantly, we do not live in an era in which courts alone are
attuned to and responsible for such risks. Identifying and weighing them
implicates the institutional competence and authority of the political
branches of government. Those branches can consider the full landscape
of costs and benefits, both to the public and to individuals; conduct
detailed studies; gather and assess comprehensive technical data;
account for the input of all affected groups; prioritize competing goals;
and determine the proper extent of regulation. Unlike judges, they are
not confined to the single record of a case and the parties before them. As
one prominent scholar said plainly more than a century ago, “[i]t is a
sound instinct in the community that objects to the settlement of
questions of the highest social import in private litigations between John
Doe and Richard Roe.” Roscoe Pound, Common Law and Legislation, 21
Harv. L. Rev. 383, 404 (1908). In short, judges should not be lawmakers
when actual lawmakers are on the job.
      Historically, of course, “judges were lawmakers by necessity as the
common law took form.” Elephant Ins., 644 S.W.3d at 155 (Young, J.,
concurring). For so many centuries of the common law’s development, the
rest of the government made no effort to prescribe essential rules of
conduct; the common law properly occupied the vacuum.                 The

                                    5
circumstances before us today provide no such vacuum.5 Insisting on
judicially regulating in this context would amount instead to elbowing
aside the institutions that exist for the purpose of, and have already
undertaken the duty of, legislating and regulating. When the executive
and legislative branches step up to the plate, the judicial creation of new
common-law duties or actions is akin to treating a regulatory scheme like
a Google Doc where we judges are invited to add a paragraph here or there.
       Such judicial tinkering is hardly costless. It instead poses serious
risks of destabilizing difficult balances that the other branches have
struck—including when a deliberative scheme of regulation does not
provide for liability in a given context.6         We cannot disregard “the
presumption that the Legislature acts with full knowledge of . . . extant
law.” Am. Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Arce, ___ S.W.3d ___, 2023 WL 3134718, at *4
n.14 (Tex. Apr. 28, 2023). Particularly when the legislature has focused
deeply on an area of highly regulated law, it knows if the common law
does not already impose a duty. When the legislature regulates many
aspects of such a legal terrain (especially one as prominent as drugs in

       5“Unlike the judges who developed the law of negligence, today’s judges
routinely see comprehensive statutory and regulatory schemes,” and “it is
increasingly less likely than ever before that there are gaps that judges alone
can (much less should) fill.” Elephant Ins., 644 S.W.3d at 157 (Young, J.,
concurring).
       6 By proposing a bright-line rule of restraint when the area of law at issue
is highly regulated, I do not suggest that a lack of regulation indicates that
courts should feel liberated or obligated to recognize new tort duties or actions.
While legislative exertion more obviously demonstrates an attempt to finely
tune a policy balance, inaction can also signal a policy choice, particularly in
contexts like this one that are not “genuinely new.” Id. at 159 n.7. My point is
that even if we keep the Phillips factors generally, we at least need not use them
in contexts like this one.

                                        6
the workplace) but refuses to impose new legally enforceable obligations
(such as a laboratory’s duty as requested in this case), we should assume
this result to be purposeful. We should credit the legislature with having
considered taking such a step and, for any number of reasons, declining
to do so. Maybe it prefers to await further data and experience. Maybe
it has concluded that overregulation carries more risks than benefits.7
But the one thing that is improper to assume, at least in the context of
detailed regulation or a highly familiar public-policy problem, is that the
legislature just wants to see what this Court will do.8 Regardless, the
presence of one or both indicates that perceived gaps or shortfalls should
be remedied legislatively, not by the courts.9

       7Avoiding overregulation in this context, for example, would be
consistent with our State’s approach to private-employer drug testing more
generally. See Aaron S. Demerson, Tex. Workforce Sols. & Tex. Workforce
Comm’n, Texas Guidebook for Employers 216 (2022), https://efte.twc.texas.gov/
texas-guidebook-for-employers-2022.pdf (noting that, “[u]nder Texas and federal
laws, there is almost no limitation at all on the right of private employers to
adopt drug and alcohol testing policies for their workers”).
       8 This case again provides a ready illustration. As the Court observes,
“the Fifth Circuit made an Erie guess . . . that, under Texas law, an independent
laboratory does not owe a legal duty ‘to persons tested to perform its services
with reasonable care.’ ” Ante at 10 (quoting Willis v. Roche Biomed. Lab’ys, Inc.,
61 F.3d 313, 316 (5th Cir. 1995)). Until the judgment below, we are aware of no
Texas courts that deviated from that understanding. For decades, therefore, the
legislature has known that such claims would not be heard in any forum. It is
implausible that the legislature, aware of this legal regime and fully attuned to
the complex issues surrounding drug testing, would not have stepped in if it
believed that the absence of new tort liability was undermining its regulatory
program or if such new liability would be advantageous to it.
       9The courts obviously retain important roles in highly regulated legal
areas. For one thing, courts remain the chief fora in which those laws and
regulations may be interpreted and enforced. And not just enforced, but also
tested—in proper adversary contexts, it remains a core judicial function to

                                        7
                                   *   *    *
       In short, the existence of a regulatory scheme governing the type
of conduct alleged to constitute negligence—at least when there is no
impediment to the political branches’ continued regulation—generally
should foreclose the imposition of a common law negligence duty. Thus,
even if the Phillips factors remain intact for other situations, we should
take the opportunity—at least in a future case in which the parties so
urge—to carve out circumstances like the one before us now and hold that
such factors will play no further analytical role.

                                       II
       My desire to move away from the Phillips factors—at least in
contexts like today’s case, and perhaps more generally—does not connote
disrespect for them. When they were announced in Greater Houston
Transportation Co. v. Phillips, 801 S.W.2d 523 (Tex. 1990), the
enumerated factors facilitated judicial restraint. It was a necessary and
welcome speedbump following an extravagant era of largely uninhibited
judicial creativity. Given Phillips’s important place in our legal history,
it is impossible to regard its now-eponymous factors without a healthy
measure of gratitude. They made it easier for courts to pause and reflect

determine whether the legislature (and, by extension, agencies) have complied
with all relevant principles of constitutional (and administrative) law.
       My point, therefore, is not that courts must supinely yield to anything an
agency (whether expert or otherwise) might say. Quite to the contrary, courts
should and must ensure that the political branches and the agencies they
empower do not overstep. But when it comes to the lawmaking function, the
very fact that the legislature has focused on a problem (including when it
delegates to agencies, whether properly or not) may mean that we have much
less need to act as common-law judges in that area, and perhaps no need at all.

                                       8
on whether another branch of government would be better equipped to
determine how best to order societal responsibilities and resources.
       My dissenting friends and colleagues, however, invoke the very
principles that led Phillips to attempt a recalibration of judicial excess.
The common law, they say, “is not frozen or stagnant, but evolv[es]”
when “the need [arises] in a changing society.” Post at 2, 16 (Boyd, J.,
dissenting) (quoting El Chico Corp. v. Poole, 732 S.W.2d 306, 310, 311
(Tex. 1987)). As those societal changes occur, the dissent adds, “it is the
duty of this court,” id. at 2 (quoting Poole, 732 S.W.2d at 310), to evaluate
whether the “changing social standards and increasing complexities of
human relationships in today’s society” “justify imposing a duty” we have
not previously recognized, id. at 1–2 (quoting Otis Eng’g Corp. v. Clark,
668 S.W.2d 307, 310 (Tex. 1983)).
       These statements were anachronistic when they were made in
1983 and 1987.10 Those cases’ conception of the judicial role betrays an

       10Notably, in one of the areas of common law left to the U.S. Supreme
Court—implying causes of action—that Court went through a similar process
of exuberance and retrenchment, including with respect to the indisputably
important goal of protecting constitutional rights.
       In his concurring opinion in Bivens, for example, Justice Harlan
forthrightly put it this way: “[T]he range of policy considerations we may take
into account is at least as broad as the range . . . a legislature would consider
with respect to an express statutory authorization of a traditional remedy.”
Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S.
388, 407 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment) (emphasis added).
        Things quickly changed. The U.S. Supreme Court stopped implying
other Bivens actions around the time that this Court made the statements about
the evolution of the common law in the two cases cited above. And fast-forward
to last year, in which the U.S. Supreme Court put it this way: “A court faces only
one question: whether there is any rational reason (even one) to think that

                                        9
undue confidence in the judiciary’s ability, much less authority, to oversee
society. Judges are not at all equipped to measure the “complexities of
human relationships in today’s society,” and we lack the resources to
survey (much less understand) our “changing society[’s]” various
“need[s].” Judges are elected for legal analysis, such as interpreting the
meaning of documents and clearly articulating the meaning of existing
law. These are very important and powerful roles that have little, if
anything, to do with telling a society how to run its affairs. Fortunately,
other branches of government do have that authority: those who are
elected to devise and implement policy choices.
       The irony is that the dissent would harness the Phillips factors in
service of the repudiated vision of an invasive judiciary, when the point
of Phillips was to do the opposite. But I cannot fault the dissent for this
approach—Phillips itself makes it possible because its factors remain
inherently malleable. Social questions, political questions, economic
questions, social utility, burdens and benefits, and all the rest—who can
say how such a “balance” turns out, or that it is balanced wrongly?

Congress is better suited to weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages
action to proceed.” Egbert v. Boule, 142 S. Ct. 1793, 1805 (2022) (internal
quotations omitted). “[E]ven a single sound reason to defer to Congress is
enough to require a court to refrain from creating such a remedy.” Id. at 1803
(emphasis added) (internal quotations omitted).
        We need not go so far with respect to all common law; after all, state
courts do possess a broader repository of common-law authority than federal
courts. But I do not see why it should be terribly controversial, at least with
respect to highly regulated areas of the law, to agree with Egbert’s logic. For
those areas, unless there is no good reason to think that the legislature “is better
suited to weigh” all the various factors involved in creating a new duty to govern
civil and commercial relationships (and that would be, to put it mildly, rare), we
should stay our hand.

                                        10
      The Phillips factors, in other words, provided (and perhaps still
provide) a useful yield sign. But after that pause, they do not in and of
themselves prevent the determined judicial driver from zooming forth
again. Fortunately, our Court has rarely put the foot back on the gas.
The Phillips factors, however, are not themselves why we have
discontinued broadly recognizing a host of new duties or causes of action.
We do not need any factors to know that it is “highly unlikely that we
could properly ‘discover’ a new duty lurking in the shadows after all these
generations.” Elephant Ins., 644 S.W.3d at 159 (Young, J., concurring).
      One unfortunate aspect of the concept of “balancing” tests—where
facts and factors are weighed—is that it plays on the common judicial
imagery of “the scales of justice.” As attractive as such an image is for
some purposes, it is inapposite here. Balancing implies some calculable
and reliable result. But the Phillips factors cannot provide for any such
thing. The weighing of these factors manufactures an ability for judges
to place a thumb on the scale—consciously or not—and then depict, to
ourselves and others, the result as following from a neutral weighing.
The idea is that the judge is no more responsible for the outcome of that
weighing than the doctor is when we step onto his scales.
      That is not usually how “balancing” tests actually work in the law.
As one of my colleagues has previously noted, “[a] judge applying such a
[balancing] test can become indistinguishable from a policymaker, for
nothing in the test ‘stop[s] [him] from arriving at any conclusion he sets
out to reach.’ ” Abbott v. Anti-Defamation League Austin, Sw., & Texoma
Regions, 610 S.W.3d 911, 928 (Tex. 2020) (Blacklock, J., concurring)
(quoting McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 799 (2010) (Scalia,

                                    11
J., concurring)). And as another eminent jurist has commented in a
different context, “what happens when the factors point in different
directions[?] . . . No one knows. You get to guess.” Axon Enter., Inc. v.
FTC, 598 U.S. 175, 207 (2023) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment)
(preliminary print). I must agree with all of this. A test that can be
reverse-engineered seems less like an exercise of judicial discretion than
a disguised exercise of the legislative function.
       The problem is not that the tests do not generate unanimity—the
justices of this Court routinely disagree about all sorts of questions. But
they are usually legal questions. Multifactor balancing tests based on
considerations     more     conducive      to   legislative   than    judicial
determinations—like the balancing of values and risks at the forefront of
the drug-testing context—are especially prone to unpredictable answers.
Predictability, like objectivity, is essential to the rule of law. But both
suffer because “[s]uch ‘balancing tests’ often invite courts to engage in
open-ended cost-benefit analysis with no objective guideposts”—“a
quintessentially legislative way of making decisions.” Abbott, 610 S.W.3d
at 928 (Blacklock, J., concurring).
       This all sounds very critical, but I am not critical of the judges who
use the Phillips factors. For one thing, our current precedents require
that effort; the Court today, and all its members (including me), are right
to adhere to them. And in addition to my recognition that the Phillips
factors have a positive origin, I also am certain that no justice of this Court
uses them cynically to simply reach a desired result. Rather, I only note
that such an especially indeterminate and subjective test has the
potential to be used in a less than unbiased manner, even if done so

                                      12
unwittingly.
                                  *   *     *
       Instead of the current factor-ridden balancing test on which we
must rely, I await a day in which the Court is presented with a new
exercise—one that does not depend on subjective interpretations of policy
considerations flexibly wielded to reach a particular result.          In the
meantime, while I acknowledge our broad authority to recognize new
duties or causes of action, I am grateful that the Court continues to
exercise extreme caution when asked to do so—especially in a highly
regulated context like this.
                                      III

       Finally, and most briefly, I believe that the principles that I have
articulated are among the best ways for us to honor the common law and
our role as its custodians.
       Adopting clear rules about when we will not accept invitations to
expand the common law is a way to preserve the common law’s integrity.
Jurisdictional rigor involves an analogous point. “[J]udicial duty is not
less fitly performed by declining ungranted jurisdiction than in exercising
firmly that which the Constitution and the laws confer.”             Ex parte
McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506, 515 (1869).11 Our job is to decide
cases—when we have jurisdiction. And our job is to expand and contract

       11 Many citations of McCardle use 1868 for its year of decision. But
while it was heard in December Term 1868, the Court decided it in 1869. See
William H. Rehnquist, Judicial Independence, 38 U. Rich. L. Rev. 579, 590 n.41
(2004) (explaining both the confusion regarding McCardle’s citation and the
correct date to use). Since Chief Justice Rehnquist’s article, the U.S. Supreme
Court has not used the erroneous 1868 date.

                                      13
common-law duties and actions—when the conditions for doing so exist.
      Recognizing the proper boundaries of the common law, therefore,
would not, as our dissenting colleagues contend, forfeit our “role as
guardian of the common law.” Post at 3. Recognizing these limits instead
ensures that, like all judicial decisionmaking, common-law emanations
arise by necessity and not through will or mere preference. There is no
necessity to regulate an area that the other branches are already
regulating.
      Importantly, I do not contend that the Court lacks the power to
take the steps that the dissent would take. In this sense the analogy to
subject-matter jurisdiction is imperfect. The question instead is one of
sound judicial administration, respect for the separation of powers, and a
desire to ensure that the common law is playing only roles of undoubted
propriety.
      Many such roles remain, of course. The common law is not going
anywhere and I am not advocating otherwise. Indeed, the common law
has a privileged jurisprudential position.       One of the “[s]tabilizing
[c]anons” of construction is that “statutes will not be interpreted as
changing the common law unless they effect the change with clarity.”
Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of
Legal Texts 318 (2012). This Court accordingly “follow[s] an ‘opt-out’
approach      that   incorporates   common-law    principles   absent   the
Legislature’s clear repudiation.” Taylor v. Tolbert, 644 S.W.3d 637, 650
(Tex. 2022). Unsurprisingly, this Court still routinely decides a host of
common-law cases in many legal areas—including torts. Of course, “as
other sources of law proliferate, our common-law garden will require

                                     14
more pruning than fertilizing.” Elephant Ins., 644 S.W.3d at 158 (Young,
J., concurring). But any pruning must satisfy the requirements of stare
decisis.   Until this Court says otherwise, or the legislature clearly
supersedes it by statute, the rather substantial body of common law
remains wholly in effect.
       The common law, moreover, plays another vital role in the life of
the law: informing and infusing our understandings of myriad legal
texts, both old and new. To determine what later-enacted laws mean,
as I recently discussed in a concurring opinion, “the common law is
especially valuable. ‘[W]e construe statutory language against the
backdrop of common law, assuming the Legislature is familiar with
common-law traditions and principles.’ ” Arce, 2023 WL 3134718, at *15
(Young, J., concurring) (quoting Marino v. Lenoir, 526 S.W.3d 403, 409
(Tex. 2017)).
       These important roles make it all the more important that we
exercise caution in changing—and especially in expanding—the common
law’s reach. Because the Court exercised such caution in this case, I am
pleased to concur.

                                        Evan A. Young
                                        Justice
OPINION FILED: June 23, 2023

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