The Houston [1st] Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court order granting summary judgment to a developer and engineering company in a suit brought by hundreds of homeowners alleging that their negligence caused their homes to flood during Hurricane Harvey.
Jason Alexander, et al. v. The Woodlands Land Development L.P., The Howard Hughes Corporation, LJA Engineering, Inc. f/k/a LJA Engineering & Surveying, Inc., and James R. Bowles (No. 01-22-00827-CV; October 9, 2026) arose from a flooding event caused by Hurricane Harvey that damaged hundreds of homes in the Timarron subdivision in The Woodlands. The homeowners sued the developer and engineering company, asserting negligence, gross negligence, and negligent undertaking. In short, they alleged that Defendants knew or should have known they designed the subdivision’s minimum slab elevations below both the historic flood level of a 1994 storm and the 500-year level. Defendants filed motions for summary judgment, which the trial court granted.
In an opinion by Justice Guerra, the court of appeals affirmed. Beginning with Plaintiffs’ claims against the developer, the court determined that the developer owed no duty to Plaintiffs because under Texas law, developers don’t have a common-law duty to downstream purchasers. Defendants further urged the court not to recognize one in this case because: “(1) there is no contractual or other relationship between appellants and appellees, (2) other jurisdictions have rejected such a duty, (3) the probability of injury is low given appellees’ compliance with existing regulatory standards (4) recognizing such a duty would place a heavy burden on appellees, and (5) recognizing such a duty would have negative consequences.”
As to Plaintiffs’ negligent undertaking claim, Defendants argued that, even if it owed the homeowners a legal duty, it fulfilled that duty when it undertook to establish minium slab elevations six inches above the flood of record based on its engineering firm’s determination. Plaintiffs couldn’t “present any evidence raising a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the developer exercised reasonable care in performing what it undertook to accomplish.” The trial court did not err in granting the developer’s MSJ.
Turning to the engineering firm’s MSJ, the court determined that since the firm had no contractual privity or other relationship with the homeowners (who purchased their homes from the builders), it didn’t owe them a duty of care. The court threw out Plaintiffs’ negligent undertaking claim as well on the basis that even if Defendants owed a duty, they fulfilled it when when they set minimum slab elevations six inches above the 1994 flood. The trial court didn’t err here, either. Nor did it err by granting Howard Hughes’s MSJ because Plaintiffs adduced no evidence that Hughes, which acquired an interest in the developer after Timarron’s development, had anything to do with the case.
