The Eastland Court of appeals has for the most part affirmed a trial court order granting summary judgment to Lyft and its insurer, Liberty Mutual, in a case involving a Lyft driver who had a wreck when his network app was turned on but he had accepted a ride.
Robert Neeley v. Lyft, Inc.; Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company; and Liberty County Mutual Insurance Company(No. 11-25-00065-CV; February 12, 2026) arose from a four-vehicle collision involving a Lyft driver, Neeley. Neeley was logged into Lyft but did not have a passenger in the car when the accident occurred. Neeley received a $30,000 estimate for the repair of his vehicle and submitted a claim to Liberty, his personal insurer and the business auto insurance and business liability carrier for Lyft. Neeley’s personal auto policy included an exclusion for a loss that occurred during the period of time the vehicle was being used by a person who is logged into a transportation network platform as a driver, regardless of whether there was a passenger in the vehicle. Lyft’s auto policy included an endorsement limiting coverage to situations in which a driver is using the network app, has accepted a request for services, and is in one of four stages of transporting a passenger. Liberty denied Neeley’s claim for collision coverage. Neeley sued Liberty and Lyft for breach of contract, Insurance Code violations, DTPA violations, and fraud. Defendants moved for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. Neeley appealed.
In an opinion by Justice Williams, the court of appeals affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part. First, the court addressed Neeley’s breach of contract claim. Liberty argued that it didn’t breach the policy because there was no evidence that Neeley’s claim was covered under his personal auto policy, which excluded coverage when the driver was logged in to the network app, or Lyft’s policy, which didn’t cover collision coverage when the driver was logged into the network but hadn’t accepted a request for transportation services. The court agreed with Liberty and affirmed summary judgment on that claim.
Next came the Chapter 541 bad faith claim. Liberty challenged the damages element, arguing that Neeley couldn’t recover for Insurance Code violations because he had no right to benefits under the policies and the independent injury rule didn’t apply. As to the first prong, Liberty already conclusively established that Neeley had no right to receive collision coverage benefits from either policy. The question then became whether Neeley pleaded damages for injuries independent of any policy benefits. The court found that all of Neeley’s claimed damages flowed directly from the loss of policy benefits, not any independent injury. Liberty thus conclusively negated an essential element of Neeley’s bad faith claim and was entitled to summary judgment on that issue.
Moving on to the fraud claim, Neeley argued that Lyft and Liberty had a duty to explain the gap in coverage between the two policies and acted fraudulently in intentionally failing to disclose the information. Under § 1954.101, Insurance Code, a transportation network company must disclose in writing the company’s insurance coverage and limits and that the driver’s personal insurance may not provide coverage when the driver is logged in to the network app. Lyft argued that it followed the law. Neeley argued that Lyft’s website led him to believe that he was covered any time the app was engaged. Observing that a website is not a contract, the court nevertheless interpreted the webpage’s language according to its plain meaning, concluding that it informed drivers that coverage was only available “once a ride request is accepted, not simply when the app is on.” The webpage was thus unambiguous, and Neeley’s interpretation was unreasonable. The trial court properly granted summary judgment for Lyft on the fraud claim. But Neeley also pleaded a statutory failure to disclose claim, which Lyft neglected to address in its motion for summary judgment. Because it didn’t challenge that pleaded cause of action in Neeley’s live petition, the trial court erred in granting summary judgment on that claim.
As to Neeley’s fraud and failure to disclose claims against Liberty, Neeley admitted that Liberty never made any disclosures to Neeley, “much less one of misrepresentation.” Liberty also proved conclusively that its policies were not ambiguous, and that Neeley’s claim in his second amended petition that Liberty mislead him by way of Lyft’s allegedly misleading website, didn’t create a duty on Liberty’s part to disclose anything to Neeley. Insurance company agents “generally [have] no duty to explain policy terms to an insured,” and there was no reason to change the law here. Even if the trial court erred in granting summary judgment on Neeley’s nondisclosure claim, which Liberty didn’t directly address in its summary judgment motion, the error was harmless.
Turning to the DTPA claims, the court observed that Lyft did not specifically address that claim in its summary judgment motion and didn’t amend the motion after Neeley added the DTPA claim in his second amended petition. But in this instance, the court determined that the DPTA claims in Neeley’s second amended petition were based on the same facts alleged in his first amended petition, i.e. they involved the same “false representations” alleged in Neeley’s fraud claim. The court, consequently, construed Lyft’s summary judgment motion as broad enough to cover the DTPA claims as well. And since the record contained no evidence of any false or misleading representation by Lyft, the trial court properly granted summary judgment on those claims. Neeley further pleaded a statutory failure to disclose claim under § 17.46(b)(24), Business & Commerce Code. Because Lyft failed to address this theory in its summary judgment motion and the court could not stretch the motion to cover this theory, the court found error and sent the issue back to the trial court. As to Liberty, however, the trial court properly granted summary judgment on Neeley’s DTPA claims because there was no independent injury upon which to base DTPA damages.
