The Texas Supreme Court has reversed a San Antonio Court of Appeals decision and reinstated a trial court order granting summary judgment in favor of the railroad company in a wrongful death claim.
Lonestar Resources, Inc., Ezra Alderman Ranches, Inc., and Union Pacific Railroad Company v. Elsa Prado, Individually and as Representative of the Estate of Rolando Prado, Jr., Deceased, and as Next Friend of A.P. Minor; Elizabeth Prado; Rolando Prado; and Maria Prado (No. 22-0431; February 23, 2024) arose from a fatal collision between Prado, an employee of an oilfield subcontractor working on Lonestar’s wellsite, and a Union Pacific train. The collision occurred at a private road and crossing owned by the ranch. A stop sign and crossbuck warning marked the crossing. As Prado crossed just before sunset, a train struck his truck, resulting in Prado’s death. The Prados filed wrongful death and survival actions against the railroad, Lonestar, and the ranch. The trial court granted each defendant’s summary judgment motion and entered a take-nothing judgment against plaintiffs. Plaintiffs appealed.
The court of appeals reversed the trial court’s summary judgment order as to the railroad, holding that Plaintiffs raised a fact issue as to whether the crossing was “extra-hazardous” and that Union Pacific failed to comply with its common law duty “to use extraordinary means to warn of an extra-hazardous railroad crossing.” The court further reversed the trial court’s grant ot summary judgment in favor of the ranch, again holding that Plaintiffs raised a fact issue as to whether the ranch gave adequate warning of the railroad crossing.
In an opinion by Justice Boyd, SCOTX reversed and reinstated the trial court’s summary judgment orders. As to Union Pacific, the Court held that there was no evidence that the crossing was “extra-hazardous” because Plaintiffs could not show “that a prudent person exercising ordinary care cannot safely use the crossing unless extraordinary warnings or protections are provided.” Here the evidence showed that the decedent failed to stop at a stop sign that was clearly visible and unobstructed, and that if the decedent had stopped and looked up and down the clearly visible tracks, he would have seen the train. Plaintiffs’ engineer expert testified that the stop sign and crossbuck sign were inadequate, primarily because the slight curve in the road before the track, coupled with the signs lacking a reflective strip and giving a driver only 266 feet to react as opposed to the federally-required 270 feet, did not make the crossing “visible early enough.” Plaintiffs also offered a human-factors expert who testified that since pretty much nobody ever stopped at the stop sign (even though the law imposes a duty to stop at a stop sign), the sign “lacked credibility” and the railroad should have known drivers wouldn’t stop without more extraodinary measures. SCOTX found these arguments entirely unpersuasive. Just because most drivers don’t stop at a stop sign doesn’t mean that “objectively, a reasonably prudent driver using ordinary care could not stop at the sign or could not pass the crossing safely without some additional warning.” Moreover, the fact that one other fatal accident had occurred at the crossing in 40 years does not establish that the crossing was extra-hazardous.
As to Plaintiffs’ negligent-failure-to-warn claim against the ranch. The ranch did not contest that Prado was a licensee rather than an invitee on the property and that it “owe[d] a duty not to injure the licensee willfully, wantonly, or through gross negligence, and, in cases in which the owner has actual knowledge of a dangerous condition unknown to the licensee, a property owner owes a licensee the duty to warn or make safe the dangerous condition” (citations omitted). Here, the Court ruled, Plaintiffs failed to present any evidence that the ranch actually knew that the railroad crossing was unreasonably dangerous. It neither had access to reporting of railroad accidents or ever received of saw an accident report of the prior fatal accident at the crossing.
This is the kind of case that should make one a little suspicious of “human-factors experts.” Trying to convince a court that it’s perfectly fine to run a stop sign and that somebody else is at fault when it happens and causes an accident takes some big cahones, to be sure, but did we really need SCOTX to tell us it won’t fly?
