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Supreme Court of Texas - 997 S.W.2d 584
The court found General Motors Corporation (G.M.) negligent and the transmission defectively designed, but also found the decedent partially responsible for the accident that caused Lee Sanchez Jr.'s death due to a truck's transmission and transmission-control linkage defect. The court awarded the plaintiffs' actual damages, reduced by the jury's comparative responsibility finding, but denied punitive damages due to insufficient evidence of gross negligence. The plaintiffs presented evidence to support their theory, and the court of appeals affirmed the award of $8.5 million in actual and punitive damages, with some justices dissenting. G.M. challenges the trial court's refusal to apply the comparative responsibility statute and argues that there is no evidence to support liability for negligence or strict liability. The plaintiffs argue that evidence supports both findings and that comparative responsibility does not apply as a defense to strict liability. The court found that the plaintiffs did not need to physically create and test a safer alternative design, but only to demonstrate that such a design was "capable of being developed." The court concluded that the evidence presented by Tamny raised a fact question that the jury resolved in favor of the plaintiffs, and that the plaintiffs had presented more than a scintilla of evidence that Tamny's alternative design substantially reduced the risk of injury. The court also found that Sanchez's actions were not a defense to strict liability. The jury found Sanchez to be 50% responsible for his accident, and GM argued that this finding should reduce its liability for damages in both negligence and strict liability. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict that the defendant breached the duty to use ordinary care and was fifty percent responsible for the accident. The court is determining if the evidence of an extreme degree of risk is sufficient to award punitive damages to the plaintiffs. However, the evidence does not support the subjective element of the case.
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