Products Liability—The SCOTX Report

23-0756·Petition For Review

Texas courts lack specific personal jurisdiction over an Austrian aircraft-engine manufacturer whose engine reached Texas only through an independent Bahamian distributor's territory-wide distribution agreement, because the stream-of-commerce-plus test requires conduct specifically targeting Texas; mere foreseeability that products will arrive, a general worldwide or hemispheric distribution agreement, a passive website, and third parties' registration and repair of engines are not enough.
Rotax and its independent distributor are distinct entities, so the distributor's activities cannot be attributed to Rotax absent agency or alter-ego proof, and a manufacturer's instruction not to ship to sanctioned countries does not mean it has availed itself of every other forum.

24-0040·Other

Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 15.003(b) permits an interlocutory appeal of a venue ruling in a multi-plaintiff case only where the trial court had to decide whether a plaintiff independently established proper venue; it does not apply merely because there are multiple plaintiffs, so the general bar on interlocutory venue appeals in § 15.064(a) controls where plaintiffs assert identical claims on identical venue facts.
The court of appeals therefore lacked jurisdiction over the interlocutory venue appeal, and the Court vacated its judgment without reaching whether Dallas County was a proper venue.

24-0207·Petition For Review

Texas courts lack specific personal jurisdiction over a South Korean fuel-pump manufacturer that designed the pump for the North American region and knew it was sold in Texas, because designing a product for a large region that includes Texas makes arrival foreseeable but is not additional conduct targeting Texas; a replacement pump bought at a Texas dealer, an English-language website, and the automaker's U.S. sales do not show targeting either.
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in overruling a personal-knowledge objection to the manufacturer's affidavit, which laid a foundation through the affiant's seventeen years of roles, meetings attended, and documents reviewed.

24-0411·Petition For Review

The Court denied Howmet's petition, but Justice Young (joined by Justices Sullivan and Hawkins) wrote that the Court will need to decide whether proof of dose is required in single-source asbestos cases, as Bostic v. Georgia-Pacific said, and criticized the court of appeals for dismissing Bostic's statement as "nonbinding obiter dicta."
He concurred in the denial because this petition would not let the Court reach the issue: the court of appeals also held the plaintiffs' proof of dose was sufficient, and Howmet's petition focuses on a different question.

24-0883·Mandamus

The federal General Aviation Revitalization Act barred a wrongful-death suit over a 1997 helicopter that crashed twenty years later, because its 18-year repose clock restarts only when a "new" part alleged to have caused the accident is added or replaced.
Revisions to the flight manual that never changed the alleged warning defect did not amount to a new part, so the Court conditionally granted mandamus.

25-0291·Petition For Review

Whether the Texas Tort Claims Act's discretionary-function exceptions (sections 101.056 and 101.060) bar a premises-defect claim against TxDOT over loose limestone rock asphalt on a repaved highway, including whether loose rock asphalt is a "special defect" and whether those exceptions apply when a statutory duty dictates TxDOT's actions.
Whether the manufacturer of limestone rock asphalt had a duty to warn TxDOT's maintenance yard workers that the material has a limited shelf life, whether that duty turns on the workers' subjective knowledge or the objective needs of all foreseeable users, and, alternatively, whether the judgment can be affirmed on no-evidence grounds.

26-0005·Petition For Review

A trial court's own acknowledgment that a statute has more than one plausible reading which this Court hasn't yet resolved is, by itself, enough to show "a substantial ground for difference of opinion" supporting a permissive interlocutory appeal.
A court of appeals shouldn't withhold permissive appeal just because only one existing court of appeals decision has addressed the question and no square conflict yet exists.