The San Antonio Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court order granting summary judgment to an employer and several insurers in a car wreck case involving an employee driver.
Enrique Cantu and Bridgefield Casualty Insurance Company v. Javier Lisbon, Nosbil, Inc. et al. (No. 04-25-00040-CV; November 26, 2025) arose from a crash between a passenger vehicle and a tractor. Ramirez, an employee of Nosbil, was driving the tractor on the shoulder of a Maverick County highway when he maneuvered onto the main lane of the highway, where Cantu collided into the tractor’s mowing attachment. It was undisputed that Ramirez was acting in the course and scope of this employment with Nosbil at the time of the accident. Cantu sued Ramirez, Lisbon and Nosbil for negligence and negligence per se, and asserted claims of negligent hiring, training and retention against Nosbil and Lisbon. Cantu also sued Utica National Insurance Group, Utica National Insurance Company of Texas, Utica Mutual Insurance Company, and Republic Franklin Insurance Company, alleging that those entities issued uninsured and underinsured motorist policies to Nosbil and didn’t pay his claims. Bridgefield Insurance asserted a subrogation interest, contending it paid worker’s compensation benefits to Cantu.
The “insurance defendants” filed a joint motion for summary that the record showed was never heard or set for hearing by the trial court. The “Nosbil defendants” filed both a traditional and no-evidence motion for summary judgement, and the trial court heard the no-evidence motion in October 2024. Cantu provided summary judgement evidence, including a personal affidavit, an affidavit and report from an accident reconstructionist, an EMS report regarding the crash, and post-collision medical records. The trial court sustained the Nosbil defendants’ objections to portions of both affidavits and a majority of the medical records. It then granted the Nosbil defendants’ no-evidence motion for summary judgement and did not address their traditional motion. In the order, the court dismissed all claims against the Nosbil defendants. Plaintiffs appealed.
In an opinion by Justice Valenzuela, the court of appeals affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part. Plaintiff Cantu argued that trial court abused its discretion by excluding parts of his summary judgement evidence, granting a no-evidence summary judgement on his ordinary negligence claims, and rendering favorable judgement to the insurance defendants. The court noted that Cantu’s brief did not acknowledge any challenges to no-evidence summary judgement on his claims of negligence per se, negligent hiring, training and retention, and negligent entrustment claims. Consequently, the court affirmed as to those claims.
Next, the court considered the the Nosbil defendants’ motion for no-evidence summary judgment. Based on Plaintiff Cantu’s evidence at trial and when viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the court found that a reasonable factfinder could conclude that Ramirez, driving in a heavy fog without using lights, moved his vehicle into Cantu’s lane “suddenly and without warning.” Reasonable people could therefore disagree whether Ramirez acted in a reasonable way in those circumstances. The conflicting evidence offered by the Nosbil defendants (including the police officer’s accident report) did “‘no more than create a fact issue on whether [Cantu] was the sole cause of the wreck,’ and fact issues may not be resolved on summary judgment” (citations omitted).
The Nosbil defendants further contended that because Plaintiff Cantu did not challenge the trial court’s dismissal of his negligence per se claims, he could not establish a breach of duty by pointing to any statutory violations “regarding Ramirez’s speed, lights, and signage.” The court found the argument without basis because “abandonment of [Plaintiff’s] negligence per se claim [does not mean] he cannot provide his common-law ordinary negligence claim.” The court stated that the Nosbil defendants cited no authority supporting this argument and declined to affirm summary judgment on that basis. Consequently, the court concluded that the summary judgment evidence, even without the evidence excluded by the trial court, was sufficient to satisfy Plaintiff’s burden as to the duty and breach elements of his negligence claim.
Next, the court took up the Nosbil defendants’ argument that Plaintiff offered no evidence on the cause in fact and foreseeability elements of proximate cause. The court determined that the Nosbil defendants could not be granted no-evidence summary judgement on foreseeability because they cited no authority that required Plaintiff to present evidence of “the foreseeability of the risk, if any, posed by his own conduct, and we are not aware of any.” The court acknowledged that the question of whether Cantu’s conduct caused the collision could be relevant to defensive issues, but defendants could not obtain no-evidence summary judgement on the elements of their own defenses.
The Nosbil defendants argued further that Plaintiff had to present expert medical testimony on causation to support his claims during the summary judgement hearing. Plaintiff’s summary judgment response showed that he was taken to the hospital by an ambulance following the crash. Absent expert testimony, however, the court looked to Guevara v. Ferrer, 247 S.W.3d 662 (Tex. 2007), in which SCOTX held that a plaintiff being pulled from a car accident with injuries they did not previously have and being taken to a hospital was sufficient evidence to support a jury finding of causation without expert evidence. As the court observed, “[l]ay testimony can suffice to establish the causal connection between an auto accident and a physical condition if (1) the condition is within the common knowledge and experience of lay persons, (2) it did not exist before the accident, (3) it appeared close in time after the accident, and (4) it is a condition within the common knowledge and experience of laypersons, caused by auto accidents.” Kelly & Witherspoon, LLP v. Hooper, 401 S.W.3d 841, 849 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2013, no pet.) (citing Guevara, 247 S.W.3d at 667). The court concluded that the facts of this case fit the Guevara pattern, since the EMS report indicated that Plaintiff complained of shoulder, back, and neck pain at the scene and was taken to the hospital by ambulance immediately after the accident. This was “more than a scintilla of evidence to establish a causal connection between the collision and Cantu’s immediate post-collision complaints of pain, his transportation by ambulance to the hospital, and his examination in the emergency room” (citations omitted).
Even though the Nosbil defendants noted that Cantu’s past medical records posed questions about pre-existing conditions that expert testimony would aid in solving, the court clarified that defendants’ no-evidence motion “did not challenge Cantu’s ability to present expert medical evidence that the collision caused specific conditions,” but instead contended that there was no evidence that the car accident caused any damages. Based on Guevara, therefore, the court rejected the Nosbil defendants’ argument and ruled that they were not entitled to no-evidence summary judgment based on the causation or damages factors of Cantu’s claim. The court reversed the trial court order granting the Nosbil defendants’ no-evidence summary judgment and remanded to the trial court.
As to Plaintiff’s third issue, which contended the trial court erred in rendering judgement in favor of the insurance defendants, the court looked back at the record, which did not reflect either the occurrence or scheduling of a hearing addressing the joint motion for summary judgement by the insurance defendants. The court concluded that without such a hearing, the trial court’s judgement in favor of the insurance defendants must likewise be reversed and remanded.
TCJL Legal Intern Haden Knobloch researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
