The Houston [14th] Court of Appeals has reversed a judgment awarding a plaintiff $500,000 in a product liability case because the trial court improperly admitted a previously undisclosed expert opinion that prejudiced the defendant.
American Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. SFI 59 LP d/b/a Briarwood Apartments (No. 14-24-00469; November 18, 2025) arose from a product liability suit in which a jury found American Honda liable for damages caused to Briarwood Apartments a Honda CRV caught fire in the parking lot. An expert for Briarwood testified that the fire was caused by a manufacturing defect in the vehicle’s fuse box. Before trial, American Honda moved for summary judgment on the basis that it did not manufacture the vehicle and was “statutorily insulated from liability.” The company maintained this position throughout the trial. After the jury found Honda 100% responsible and awarded Briarwood more than $500,000, Honda moved for judgment notwithstanding verdict on thiat ground. It also reasserted objections to Briarwood’s expert testimony, which contained previously undisclosed opinions presented before the jury. The trial court denied American Honda’s motions and rendered judgement on the verdict. Honda appealed.
In a lengthy opinion by Chief Justice Christopher, the court reversed the judgment and remanded to the trial court for new trial. Honda contended that it was a non-manufacturing seller of the vehicle and was thus immune from liability, the evidence was legally insufficient to support judgement, and the trial court erred by letting Briarwood’s expert witness testify on a previously undisclosed opinion in trial regarding an alleged manufacturing defect. In its motion for JNOV, the company argued that Honda CRVs, including the vehicle at issue, are designed in Japan and manufactured by Honda Development & Manufacturing of America. Briarwood, however, cited the subject vehicle’s manufacturer certificate of origin, which listed American Honda exclusively and not Honda Motor or HDMA. As the court observed, “[t]he determination of whether a defendant was a manufacturer of a particular product presents a mixed question of law and fact” (citations omited). But “although courts can determine the effect of a statute on undisputed facts as a matter of law,” there was conflicting evidence in this case that could support either conclusion (i.e., Honda’s employees’ testimony vs. the manufacturer’s certificate of origin). In view of the conflicting evidence, the court deferred to the jury and determined that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s finding that American Honda manufactured the vehicle. (Though based on the facts recited by the court, the jury’s finding was highly questionable.)
Next, the court considered whether the evidence was legally and factually sufficient to show that a manufacturing defect existed and was a producing cause of the fire. The vehicle fire was originally investigated by four different parties. Of those four, American Honda was the only one which concluded that the fire did not start from under the hood of the vehicle. At his deposition, Briarwood’s expert witness explained that the fire originated in the fuse box and said a high resistance connection in the wiring could ignite a fire, but he could not identify a specific connection due to the fire destroying evidence. In trial, however, Camara testified with a photograph that showed an improper high resistance connection in the wiring of the fuse box. At trial Honda objected to the expert’s testimony, arguing that it was unreliable because he “relief on unsupported assumptions about the amount of current available to the fuse box while the vehicle was turned off, and because [he] did not depict the condition of the connection at issue when the vehicle specifications.” But Honda failed to object that the photograph did not depict the condition of the connection at issue when the vehicle left the manufacturer. Consequently, Honda did not preserve this objection for appellate review.
The court reviewed Honda’s objections to the expert’s testimony and disagreed with its arguments that said the testimony was unreliable because he failed to review specifications of the vehicle’s design, and that he was not qualified because he had never worked for a vehicle manufacturer or parts supplier. But the expert had multiple fire investigator certificates and many years of experience in the field when he testified. The court found that his theory of a misaligned connection in the wiring was not unreliable and that the testimony of another Briarwood expert demonstrated that a high-resistance connection could continue increasing amperage up the battery’s limit, a hundred times greater than minimum necessary to start a glowing connection. As to Honda’s contention that the expert didn’t review the vehicle’s design specifications and could not opine on the existence of a manufacturing defect. The court rejected that argument as well, holding that the jury could ‘reasonably conclude that a high-resistance connection in the bus of the fuse box was an unreasonably dangerous deviation from the vehicle’s specifications, and that the connection’s high resistance causes its parasitic draw to increase to at least 4-6 amperes necessary to start a glowing connection and ignite the surrounding material.”
However, just when it appeared that the court would pour out Honda entirely, it agreed with Honda that the trial court reversibly erred in admitting the expert’s previously undisclosed opinion testimony “identifying a specific improper connection between two wires as a manufacturing defect and the cause of the fire.” TRCP 193.5 requires a party to make an amended or supplemental response “reasonably promptly after the party discovers the need for it,” but in no case less than 30 days before trial. Failure to timely amend or supplement the deposition or written report of a retained expert precludes a party from introducing the undisclosed material in evidence, unless the party shows, and the trial court finds, “that there was good cause for the failure to timely amend or supplement the information, or that the failure will not unfairly surprise or unfairly prejudice the other parties.” Here, the court ruled, disclosure of the photograph was mandatory under the rule because “at trial, [the expert] purported to do what he previously claimed was impossible. Rather than maintaining that the fire had destroyed the evidence, he instead singled out a single photograph, opining that it depicted the specific defect caused the fire. Given [the expert’s] prior testimony, American Honda could not have anticipated this reversal of [the expert’s] position and the need to prepare a rebuttal of [the expert’s] characterization of the photograph at issue.” The court characterized this testimony as a “surprise attack,” not, as Briarwood argued, “an expansion of his already disclosed testimony which faulted the fuse box for the fire.
Turning to Briarwood’s argument that its non-disclosure didn’t unfairly surprise or prejudice Honda, the court determined that it did just that. No other evidence offered at trial directed the jury to a specific cause for the fire. The court found that Briarwood’s failure to disclose this information prevented American Honda from preparing rebuttal testimony. Furthermore, by the time the company moved for a new trial, Honda produced another photograph from the record that contradicted the expert’s claim of a specific wiring defect. Put another way, “the case turned on [the expert’s] previously undisclosed opinion that a particular photograph depicted the specific high-resistance connection that caused the fire.” The court thus determined that the erroneous admission probably caused the rendition of an improper verdict. The court reversed the judgment and remanded for new trial.
TCJL Legal Intern Haden Knobloch researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
