Trial News

A man seeking damages for his personal injuries and the destruction of his plane can bring a common law breach of implied warranty claim against a plane repair company, said the Texas Supreme Court. The court reversed the lower court’s finding that the man’s suit was time-barred by the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act’s (DTPA) two-year statute of limitations. (Nghiem v. Sajib & Global Aviation Serv., 2019 WL 406123 (Tex. Feb. 1, 2019)).

In 2013, Daniel Nghiem’s small plane crashed after its engine failed, injuring Nghiem and his passenger, Rupom Sajib, and destroying the plane. Global Aviation Services had serviced the plane before the crash. Sajib timely filed suit in Texas state court, claiming Global Aviation had negligently performed maintenance and repairs on the plane. More than two years after the crash, Nghiem petitioned to intervene as a plaintiff in the suit, claiming negligence and breach of implied warranty of good and workmanlike repair of tangible goods or property.

Global Aviation argued, and Nghiem and the lower court agreed, that Nghiem’s negligence claim was time-barred by the two-year statute of limitations generally applicable to tort claims. Global Aviation also argued that the breach of implied warranty claim is only available under Texas’s DTPA, which also has a two-year statute of limitations. Global Aviation relied on the state high court’s holding in Melody Home Manufacturing Co. v. Barnes (741 S.W.2d 349 (Tex. 1987)) that “an implied warranty to repair or modify existing tangible goods or property in a good and workmanlike manner is available to consumers suing under the DTPA.” The trial court dismissed both of Nghiem’s claims.

On appeal, Nghiem countered that his implied warranty claim was not brought under the DTPA, and so it was not time-barred by the DTPA’s two-year statute of limitations. He asserted that an implied warranty claim is also available under common law, and that his common law claim was subject to Texas’s residual four-year statute of limitations. The appellate court acknowledged a court split on whether implied warranty claims could be made only under the DTPA or also under common law but agreed with the trial court that the implied warranty claim was actionable exclusively under the DTPA.

The high court reversed, specifying that its holding in Melody Home “says nothing about whether the implied warranty . . . is actionable apart from the DTPA.” The court then looked to its decision in Certain-Teed Products Corp. v. Bell (422 S.W.2d 719 (Tex. 1968)), where it concluded that “a warranty which the law implies from the existence of a written contract is as much a part of the writing as the express terms of the contract, and the action to enforce such a warranty is governed by the statute pertaining to written contracts.” The court concluded that a breach of an implied warranty may give rise to a tort claim and a contract claim, depending on whether the breach was of “a duty created by contract” or “a duty imposed by operation of law.” Implied warranty claims arising from contract exist apart from claims under the DTPA, the court held.

Noting that “different implied warranties behave differently,” the court declined to decide whether Nghiem’s claim arose under contract and thus subject to the residual four-year statute of limitations. The court instead found that the lower court abused its discretion in dismissing Nghiem’s claim as time-barred under the DTPA because Nghiem’s implied warranty claim was not made under the DTPA, so DTPA’s two-year statute of limitations did not apply.

Austin, Texas, attorney Michael Slack, who handles aviation law cases, explained that “legislative changes in 1995 and 2003 [had] imposed severe limitations on recoverable damages under the Texas DTPA in personal injury cases” and consequentially, the DTPA “has been infrequently used by plaintiffs as a remedy.” The high court’s decision, he noted, provides that “claims for failure to perform repairs in a ‘good and workmanlike’ manner do not have to be brought under the DTPA, with its attendant limitations on damages, to be viable. In aviation cases involving maintenance, repairs or post-market modifications, practitioners filing in Texas should strongly consider including the common law implied warranty claim.”