The Houston [1st] Court of Appeals has reversed a $300,000 judgment against a beer distributor stemming from an accident involving one of its trucks because the plaintiff failed to establish that an allegedly defective tire substantially caused the accident.
Houston Distributing Company, Inc. v. Lucile Benson (No. 01-23-00879-CV; October 9, 2025) arose from a three-vehicle collision involving a beer distributor’s truck. At a light on Highway 6, the truck skidded on the wet surface, striking a pick-up truck directly in front of it. The collision pushed the pick-up truck forward, striking Plaintiff’s vehicle. Plaintiff filed suit against the driver and the distributor, alleging negligence and gross negligence. A non-unanimous jury found the distributor negligent because it entrusted to its driver a vehicle that it knew or should have known was defective. The jury did not find the driver negligent. It awarded Plaintiff $300,000 in damages. The distributor moved for JNOV, arguing that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the jury findings that the truck was defective and that the defect proximately caused the collision. The trial court denied the motion. The distributor appealed.
In an opinion by Justice Morgan, the court of appeals reversed and rendered judgment that Plaintiff take-nothing in its negligence claim against the distributor. The question was whether the evidence showed that a defective tire was a substantial factor in bringing about the collision, without which the harm would not have occurred. The evidence before the jury included the driver’s testimony that he could not stop the truck because he skidded after he applied the brakes and that the truck struck the pick-up. It also had the distributor’s safety director’s response to Plaintiff’s interrogatory stating that when the driver attempted to stop, the wheels locked and his testimony that “it depends on the tire whether a low tire tread (the alleged defect) means a vehicle may not be able to stop in time.” Plaintiff adduced no evidence, however, that the allegedly low tire tread was a substantial cause of the accident. At most, the evidence showed only that “the defective tire may have furnished a condition that made the collision possible. There was no evidence for the jury to conclude that without the defective tire, the collision would not have occurred.” Reversed and rendered in favor of the distributor.
