Court Opinion

ID: 9674265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:25:40.515083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.439009
License: Public Domain

DOGGETT, Justice,
joined by
GAMMAGE and SPECTOR, JJ.,
dissenting.
A fall at a ridge adjacent to a concrete entrance ramp in Brownsville meant an unexpected broken hip for 71-year-old Sarah Alexander but came as no big surprise to the store’s management. At trial, Wal-Mart acknowledged its conscious awareness of the danger which the ridge posed to customers. A jury of twelve ordinary Texans determined that the company’s failure to make $400 in ridge repairs that it knew were necessary constituted “conscious indifference to the right[s] or welfare” of those entering the store, including Mrs. Alexander. Today’s opinion, however, pardons the wrongdoer from this community judgment. To the majority, this undisputed failure to make safe the premises and thereby prevent serious harm to ah older Texan is just not important enough to merit the use of a deterrent afforded by a long established legal remedy.
I.
Prior to Mrs. Alexander’s injury, the store’s sales manager, safety committee, general manager, and corporate management in Houston were fully familiar with this particular condition. To the store manager, aware that merchandise was dislodged and damaged when shopping carts encountered this irregularity, it represented a problem. To the sales manager, who, despite his familiarity with the ridge,' had personally experienced a mishap there, it posed a serious safety hazard. To the safety committee, this danger involved a “sense of urgency” and demanded a remedy for which a specific construction bid was obtained and faxed to district management in Houston.1 All of them knew that the elderly customers who were urged to frequent their, business could be seriously harmed by a fall at this trouble spot, which could be eliminated at minimal cost. But despite this very real risk, apparently unresponsive corporate management failed to act. Indeed, Wal-Mart continues to deny any legal responsibility for this ridge, which arose on leased property at the very spot where it had constructed an entrance ramp. At least, today’s opinion does not accept their “take it up with our landlord” defense.
In reviewing a “no evidence” point, this court “must consider only the evidence and inferences tending to support the jury’s finding, viewed most favorably in support of the finding, and disregard all contrary evidence and inferences.” Havner v. E-Z Mart Stores, Inc., 825 S.W.2d 456, 458 (Tex.1992); State v. $11,011.00, 820 S.W.2d 783 (Tex.1991) (per curiam); Garza v. Alviar, 395 S.W.2d 821, 823 (Tex.1965). Today’s opinion, 868 S.W.2d at 327, cites Havner and correct*333ly “reaffirm[s]” the holding of Burk Royalty Co. v. Walls, 616 S.W.2d 911, 920-921 (Tex.1981) (emphasis in original) that
In testing a jury finding of gross negligence, the same no evidence test should apply as to any other fact issue. The plaintiff has the burden to prove that the defendant was grossly negligent. If the jury finds gross negligence, the defendant has the burden of establishing that there is no evidence to support the finding.
But having accurately stated this well established law, the majority declines to follow it.
After conceding Wal-Mart’s “undisputed” knowledge of this risk and declaring that the probability of the occurrence of harm is central to determining whether a risk is “extreme,” 868 S.W.2d at 324, the majority refuses to accept the evidence in this case demonstrating a significant likelihood that a customer would eventually be caused serious injury. Not only was there some evidence of this, but as the court of appeals correctly concluded the “[ejvidence that [Wal-Mart] knew of the danger and ignored it was strong.” 827 S.W.2d at 424. Nowhere does the majority explain how it can categorize as no evidence the very real evidence of awareness of this hazard by the sales manager, the safety committee, the store manager, and district management in Houston.
Although its summary of the law of gross negligence suffers from a lack of clarity,2 I join fully in the majority’s reaffirmation of *334Burk Royalty and Williams v. Steves Industries, 699 S.W.2d 570 (Tex.1985) — particularly the principle that gross negligence involves “such an entire want of care as ... shows the act or omission was the result of conscious indifference....” 616 S.W.2d at 922 and requires more than “momentary thoughtlessness, inadvertence, or error of judgment.” Id. at 920. But since applying that law here will not achieve the result that it so desperately desires, the majority ignores and defines away evidence from which a jury could easily conclude that what occurred here was not “momentary thoughts lessness” but “conscious indifference.”
II.
Based on the facts in Williams, we concluded that entrusting a commercial truck to one who has a safe driving record, but who is
without a license creates an unreasonable risk but does not involve such a high degree of risk that a jury could objectively determine that the defendant did not care whether the driver would injure someone
699 S.W.2d at 574. Hence today’s opinion is hardly novel in requiring as a prerequisite for gross negligence that the risk involved be “extreme” or of a high degree; what is unique about the current writing is the manipulation of this single word to vaporize very real evidence. Instead of reasoned discussion, the majority applies a catchword. Giving absolutely no guidance as to what makes a risk “extreme,” today’s opinion insists that a corporate manager’s plea to higher management for “urgent” action to remedy a known safety hazard constitutes no evidence whatsoever. 868 S.W.2d at 327 n. 4. If it can so easily and inexplicably eliminate the evidentiary significance of such an admission, this majority can simply squelch by branding as “non extreme” any legitimate evidence that stands in the way of a preferred outcome. Such use of the term “extreme” merely provides another elastic device for an appellate court to sweep away any evidence inconsistent with the result it wants.
To the extent that what makes a risk “extreme” is a function of any thing other than a judicially desired result, the sole determinant appears to be the probability that harm will occur. Although there is certainly some evidence here of such a probability, this is only one determinant of the “extremity” of a risk; equally important is the character of the wrongful conduct involved. Punitive damages should be tied to the outrageousness of that conduct. In Alamo Nat’l Bank v. Kraus, 616 S.W.2d 908, 910 (Tex.1981), we noted that in determining the reasonableness of the amount of an exemplary damages verdict, an appellate court must consider 1) the nature of the wrong, 2) the character of the conduct involved, 3) the degree of the culpability of the wrongdoer, 4) the situation and sensibilities of the parties concerned, and 5) the extent to which such conduct offends a public sense of justice and propriety. 616 S.W.2d at 910.3 While that holding did not expressly mandate a jury’s evaluation of these considerations in determining gross negligence, these factors are at least as important to assessing the threshold question of liability for punitive damages as to determining their amount.
With the focus in Kraus on the degree to which the defendant’s conduct defies societal behavioral norms, evidence relating to those factors is critical to determining whether there is some evidence that the defendant created an extreme risk to the welfare or safety of others. A “risk” is any “factor, element, or course involving uncertain danger.” AmericaN Heritage Dictionary 1065 (2d college ed. 1985). Thus, only by examining the course of the defendant’s conduct may the factfinder determine the extremity of the risk it created.
For example, in assessing whether a product manufacturer was grossly negligent, the factfinder must consider evidence of the extent of the defendant’s safety tests, the cost and availability of safety measures it chose not to implement, and the magnitude of the potential harm to consumers created by the defect. Such proof goes to the nature, char-*335aeter, and degree of culpability of the defendant’s wrong, and the extent to which its conduct offends a public sense of justice and propriety, and that evidence is therefore central to the deterrent and retributive purposes of punitive damages. See Pacific Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U.S. 1, 21, 111 S.Ct. 1032, 1045, 113 L.Ed.2d 1 (1991) (listing “the degree of reprehensibility” and “profitability” of defendant’s conduct as factors for “determining whether a punitive award is reasonably related to the goals of deterrence and retribution”). Such evidence has, for example, been regularly taken into account in those many determinations of punitive damages prompted by “explicit decisions to continue marketing highly dangerous products rather than make inexpensive corrections.” 4 As a restraint on the type of appellate adventurism that has occurred here, all of the Kraus factors should be considered in determining whether a risk is extreme.
To discard as completely meaningless the jury verdict for Mrs. Alexander, the majority insists that there is no evidence that an “extreme degree of risk” was presented by a hazard viewed by Wal-Mart’s own safety committee as demanding immediate repair. This record shows that, absent the recommended remedial action, it was simply a matter of time until the occurrence of a more serious mishap. How very fuzzy the majority has left the line between “extreme” and “nonextreme” risks. Indeed, “extreme” would seem a term more fitting to describe the majority’s own philosophy on this subject. Implicitly rationalizing its conclusion on grounds that Mrs. Alexander was the first to be hospitalized as a result of this hazard, the majority summarily declares “there is no evidence that this ridge was so highly dangerous that it constituted an extreme risk creating the likelihood of serious injury.” 868 S.W.2d at 327. Since when is it necessary that one Texan be hospitalized or buried before another can show an “extreme” risk of harm? Apparently not until today’s writing, which simultaneously declares that an incapacitating broken hip for an older Texan is just not sufficiently “serious” to meet a newly announced standard.
The only further insight offered to its thinking is the majority’s recurrent fear of our right to trial by jury. Unless this court implements its own social policy judgment in deciding when a risk is “extreme,” we are told that there will be a tendency to raise a fact issue of gross negligence whenever a prima facie case of ordinary negligence is raised. Id. at 327. But “[w]hat lifts ordinary negligence into gross negligence is the mental attitude of the defendant.” Burk Royalty, 616 S.W.2d, at 922. Despite knowledge of what its own manager viewed as an *336“urgent” risk, Wal-Mart nonetheless chose to do nothing about it. Evidence of a knowing or conscious disregard or indifference to this extreme risk is what permitted this jury to find that the conduct constituted gross negligence.
III.
Our law does not countenance the conversion of every instance of ordinary negligence into a case of gross negligence. Nor should this Court uphold any verdict of punitive damages that is not supported by legally sufficient evidence. But exemplary damages do form a well established part of our jurisprudence — they are designed to promote societal interests in health, safety and confidence in law enforcement. By disregarding very real evidence presented in this particular case, the majority has replaced the jury’s right to enforce a community standard with its own standard of permissiveness. Consistent with its increasing disfavor of decision-making by ordinary citizens composed as a jury,5 the majority essentially reconstitutes itself as a superjury in Austin. In a radical step, disguised as a routine no evidence review, the majority effectively transforms the gross negligence finding in at least this case into an issue of law for the court. When a court erases a verdict finding punitive damages on a record that unquestionably contains some evidence of conscious disregard for a known and extreme risk, then the right of trial by jury is rendered meaningless. This disrespect for the jury, one of this nation’s central democratic institutions, is fundamentally at conflict with the role of American legal institutions envisioned by one of history’s most respected commentators on our political system:
[I]n the United States [a citizen] is personally interested in enforcing the obedience of the whole community to the law ... because it is his own, and he regards it as a contract to which he himself is a party.
Alexander De Tocqueville, Demooracy in America 247-48 (F. Bowen trans. 2d ed. 1946).
Early in its history Texas demonstrated a particularly zealous commitment to public enforcement of our social contract by adopting unique dual constitutional protections of the right to trial by jury. See Tex. Const. art. I, § 15 and art. V, § 10; Texas Ass’n of Businesses v. Texas Air Control Bd., 852 S.W.2d 440, 460 (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting). But with the jury’s voice for the community unjustly squelched, the covenants of the public contract for the public good will no longer be enforced by the public.

. As sales manager Enriquez testified:
Q: "Sense of urgency.” You were concerned about that, weren't you?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: You were actually aware that a hazard existed out there and that somebody might trip and hurt themselves?
A: That’s correct.

. Unfortunately, the majority's discussion of gross negligence is confused by the use of the terms "objective” and "subjective” in several different contexts. Williams v. Steves Industries, 699 S.W.2d 570, 573 (Tex.1985), identifies objective and subjective tests as alternative means of establishing the requisite mental state of gross negligence:
We held in Burk Royalty that the defendant's state of mind distinguishes gross negligence from negligence; however, we also recognized that a test requiring the plaintiff to prove gross negligence by direct evidence of a defendant’s subjective state of mind would leave outrageous conduct unpunished. Therefore, we held that "[a] mental state may be inferred from actions. All actions or circumstances indicating a state of mind amounting to a conscious indifference must be examined in deciding if there is some evidence of gross negligence.” Burk Royalty, 616 S.W.2d at 922. We reaffirm our holding in Burk Royalty that the plaintiff need not prove the defendant's subjective state of mind by direct evidence. Thus, the test for gross negligence is both an objective and subjective test. A plaintiff may prove a defendant's gross negligence by proving that the defendant had actual subjective knowledge that his conduct created an extreme degree of risk. In addition, a plaintiff may objectively prove a defendant's gross negligence by proving that under the surrounding circumstances a reasonable person would have realized that his conduct created an extreme degree of risk to the safety of others.
(emphasis added). In Clifton v. Southern Pacific Transp. Co., 709 S.W.2d 636, 640 (Tex.1986), we reiterated that
Requiring the plaintiff to prove gross negligence only by direct evidence of a defendant’s subjective state of mind ... raises an almost insurmountable barrier to recovery. Recognizing this dilemma, we held in Burk Royalty that a mental state may be inferred from actions. Considering all actions or circumstances indicating a state of mind amounting to conscious indifference to the rights of others, a plaintiff may objectively prove a defendant’s gross negligence by proving that, under the surrounding circumstances, a reasonable person would have realized that his conduct created an extreme degree of risk to the safety of others.
(citations omitted). See, also Greater Houston Transp. Co. v. Zrubeck, 850 S.W.2d 579, 591 (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi 1993, writ denied); Payne v. Cinco Ranch Venture, T.M.C., 822 S.W.2d 364, 366 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1992, no writ); Wal-Mart Stores v. Berry, 833 S.W.2d 587, 593 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 1992, writ requested); Fibreboard Corp. v. Pool, 813 S.W.2d 658, 690 (Tex.App.—Texarkana 1991, writ denied), cert. denied, - U.S. -, -, -, 113 S.Ct. 2339, 3037, 3064, 124 L.Ed.2d 250 (1993); Orkin Exterminating Co. v. Williamson, 785 S.W.2d 905, 913 (Tex.App.—Austin 1990, writ denied); Deerings West Nursing Center v. Scott, 787 S.W.2d 494, 497 (Tex.App.—El Paso 1990, writ denied); Elbar, Inc. v. Claussen, 774 S.W.2d 45, 48 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1989, writ dism'd); Wright v. Gifford-Hill & Co., 736 S.W.2d 828, 831 (Tex.App.-Waco 1987, writ ref'd n.r.e.); Lawrence v. TD Industries, 730 S.W.2d 843, 845 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1987, writ ref’d n.r.e.); Denham v. United States, 834 F.2d 518, 522 (5th Cir.1987) ("Texas courts have made clear that the state of mind required to constitute gross negligence can be shown by objective evidence ... proving that, under the circumstances, a reasonable person would have realized that his conduct created an extreme degree of risk to the safety of others.”); Toomer v. United Resin Adhesives, Inc., 652 F.Supp. 219, 225-26 (N.D.Ill.1986) (Texas law allows proof of "defendant's gross negligence by proving that under the surrounding circumstances a reasonable person would have realized that his conduct created an extreme degree of risk to the safety of others.”).

. A committee charged with guiding the bench and bar in the proper preparation of jury instructions has recommended that these factors be considered by the jury in certain cases. See 2 State Bar of Texas, TexPattern Jury Charges § 29.03 (1989) ("Good Faith and Fair Dealing”).

. Michael J. Saks, Do We Really Know Anything About the Behavior of the Tort Litigation System-And Why Not? 140 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1147, 1261 (1992). In one such decision, involving the design of the Pinto automobile, the court found evidence of the availability and low cost of safer alternative designs highly indicative of a conscious disregard for consumer safely. See Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., 119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal.Rptr. 348 (1981). Aware that the Pinto’s gas tank could not withstand rear-end collisions of 20 miles per hour, Ford still refused to implement $15.30 per vehicle design changes that could have made the tank safe in a rear impact of 34-38 miles per hour. Id. 174 Cal.Rptr. at 361. For an additional $5 to $10 per unit, the tank could have endured a rear collision of 50 miles per hour or more. Id.
Other courts have taken similar evidence into account. See Dorsey v. Honda Motor Co., 655 F.2d 650, 654-55 (5th Cir.1981) (upholding punitive damage verdict based partly on evidence that defendant failed to implement feasible design alternatives that would have made its car crash-worthy); Gillham v. Admiral Corp., 523 F.2d 102, 107-08 n. 3 (6th Cir.1975) (noting potential relevance of fact that defendant failed to add safely features to its television sets that would have cost 60 cents per unit and prevented plaintiff's severe bums); Jardel Co. v. Hughes, 523 A.2d 518, 531 (Del.1987) ("economic decision may be the basis for punitive damages ... if the economic cost is intentionally weighed against a perceived risk”); Leichtamer v. American Motors Corp., 67 Ohio St.2d 456, 424 N.E.2d 568, 580 (1981) (evidence of inadequate testing of jeep's capability of surviving roll-overs sufficient to support exemplary damages); Gryc v. Dayton-Hudson Corp., 297 N.W.2d 727, 740 (Minn.1980) (upholding punitive award in part based on evidence that defendant chose to use unsafe pajama design because cost of flame retardant was too high, though it would not make product unmarketable); Wangen v. Ford Motor Co., 97 Wis.2d 260, 294 N.W.2d 437, 462 (1980) (punitive damages assessed against manufacturer which refused to recall automobile with defectively designed gas tank to "avoid paying the costs of recall and repair and ... avoid the accompanying bad publicity").

. See, e.g., C & H Nationwide, Inc. v. Thompson, - S.W.2d -, - (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting); General Motors Corp. v. Saenz, - S.W.2d -, - (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., dissenting); Texas Ass’n Businesses v. Texas Air Control Bd., 852 S.W.2d 440, 459-67 (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting); Boyles v. Kerr, 855 S.W.2d 593, 609-10 (Tex.1993) (Doggett, J., dissenting); May v. United Services, 844 S.W.2d 666, 675 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., dissenting); Leleaux v. Hamshire-Fannett Indep. Sch. Dist., 835 S.W.2d 49, 55-56 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., dissenting); Crim Truck & Tractor v. Navistar Int’l. Transp. Corp., 823 S.W.2d 591, 599 (Tex.1992) (Mauzy, J., dissenting); Reagan v. Vaughn, 804 S.W.2d 463, 491 (Tex.1991) (Doggett, J., concurring and dissenting); Greater Houston Transp. Co. v. Phillips, 801 S.W.2d 523, 527 (Tex.1990) (Doggett, J„ dissenting).