The Texas Supreme Court has overruled 40 years of case law regarding the inadmissibility of the use or non-use of seatbelts in Nabors Well Services Ltd. V. Romero, Cause No. 13-0136 (decided Feb. 13, 2015). Evidence of the failure to use of seatbelts is now fair game for proving comparative negligence on the part of a plaintiff.
For the past 40 years, the law in Texas has held that evidence of whether or not the plaintiff in a car accident case was wearing a seat belt is inadmissible at trial. However, last month the Texas Supreme Court, in Nabors Well Services Ltd. V. Romero, Cause No. 13-0136 (decided Feb. 13, 2015), issued a unanimous opinion holding that evidence that the plaintiff was not wearing a seat belt should no longer be automatically excluded in car accident cases when determining proportional fault.
Comparative Negligence in Texas
Texas is a comparative negligence system whereby a damaged party cannot recover if it is 51 percent or more at fault for his own injury. The injured party may
recover if he is 50 percent or less at fault; however, that recovery is reduced by the party’s degree of fault. Thus, after this latest Supreme Court ruling, evidence that an injured party was or was not wearing a seat belt at the time of a car accident may be introduced in order to determine whether the party was to any degree at fault for his or her own injury.
In the underlying lawsuit, a Nabors Well Services Ltd. truck collided with a SUV, causing the SUV to roll off the highway. The driver was killed and two other adults and five children were injured in the accident.
The injured SUV passengers sued Nabors for their personal injuries. During the trial, Nabors attempted to offer up expert testimony that seven of the SUV’s eight passengers were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash. The company also wanted to establish that five of those seven were thrown from the car and injured because they were unbelted.
Further, Nabors tried to introduce testimony from the passengers as to exactly who was unbelted and who was thrown from the car. The trial court excluded the witness testimony based partly on the 1974 precedent set by the Texas Supreme Court. A jury later awarded the plaintiffs $2.3 million, finding that Nabors was 51 percent at fault for the accident. An appeals court upheld that award.
On Appeal
Nabors then appealed to the state Supreme Court. In last month’s opinion, the Supreme Court notes that in 1974, when the Court first established the rule preventing seat belt evidence in car accident cases, seatbelts were not as common as they are now and there was no law requiring their use. Further, the Court pointed to the fact that the Texas state legislature has overhauled the state’s negligence statute and now apportion a plaintiff’s negligence in these types of cases when determining fault.
For both reasons, the Court felt that the 1974 evidence rule is outdated and should no longer be applied. The Court sent the case back down to the Court of Appeals for further hearings consistent with the new rule.
