Vilma negotiated with Joe Nixon, and convinced him to convince TLR that he should look at the amendment, which he agreed to do.

Vilma Luna is our hero, and Jamie Capelo is our enemy. First, Vilma wisely established a working relationship with the Republicans in control of the House. Second, she arranged for me and her to have a meeting with Rep. Joe Nixon, the author of H.B. 4, and did an outstanding job negotiating with him to save our practice. Third, I wrote an amendment that created large exceptions to the products bill as originally written, including exceptions re: adequate standards, misleading the government, or failing to warn of defects, and she caused Nixon to meet with us, and to actually consider it. Fourth, Vilma negotiated with him, and convinced him to convince TLR that he should look at the amendment, which he agreed to do.
Fifth, Greg Gowan and Alex Miller worked diligently with Vilma, as did Joseph Barrientos, to feed her with specific information needed to continue to lobby the other side. Finally, Alex Miller traveled to San Antonio to write specific wording necessary to accommodate the demands of the other side, while allowing us to do what we needed to do. In a full two days of 350 amendments being offered, Vilma's amendments to the products bill, and her work on eliminating the retroactivity provisions, were among only a very few of the amendments that actually were passed, and got into the bill. At 12:30 a.m. this morning, the house passed H.B. 4 with Vilma's amendments in it.
Everyone in the firm needs to take a moment to send an email to Vilma at her Texas House email address (attached) to tell her thanks for saving us. Additionally, the other referenced members of the firm are to be congratulated. Finally, keep a long memory. Jaime Capelo tried to shut us down, and we must not forget that when the next election cycle comes around.
Vilma's amendment to the product section of the bill converted a situation where originally all product manufacturers making a product that met federal standards (i.e., all cars and all drugs in this country) immune from suit in Texas.
Now, the bill merely creates a rebuttal presumption that product meeting a federal standard is not defective, which we can overcome by proving any one of three things:
"The claimant may rebut the presumption in Subsection (a) by establishing that:
(1) the mandatory federal safety standards or regulations applicable to the product were inadequate to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or damage;
(2) the manufacturer, before or after marketing the product, withheld information required by or misrepresented information provided to the federal government or agency that was:
(a) material and relevant to the federal government's or agency's determination that the mandatory safety standards or regulations at issue were adequate; and
(b) causally related to the claimant's injury; or
(3) with respect to the manufacturer of a motor vehicle, or a component thereof, after the product was sold and before the alleged injury occurred, the manufacturer learned the vehicle or component part contained a defect causally related to the claimant's injury and to motor vehicle safety and failed to either;
(a) give notice to the federal government, or agency of the federal government, that adopted or promulgated the applicable safety standards or regulations; or
(b) give notice by first-class mail to each person registered under Texas law as the owner and whose name and address are reasonably ascertainable by the manufacturer through state records or other available sources, or if the registered owner is not notified, to the most recent purchaser known to the manufacturer."
This is a critical amendment for the continued viability of any products case in the state of Texas, because
Section 1 gives us the ability to keep a case alive by arguing what we always argue anyway -- the federal standard governing our product is inadequate. We win cases only when the jury buys this argument anyway.
Section 2 allows us to attack the credibility of the product manufacturer's involvement or participation in the formulation of the federal standards. In the auto context specifically, we now get to get into evidence all the political b.s. the manufacturers pulled in the '60s and '70s in getting these standards watered down.
Section 3 allows us to resurrect a post-sale duty to warn in Texas. under the Dion v. Ford case, Texas recognized no common law post-sale duty to warn. Since 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1411 was rescinded, and watered down, it was a necessary amendment to allow us to continue to make the arguments we used to make that the manufacturer knew its product was defective and failed to recall it.
Most importantly, the previous iterations of the amendment were stripped; i.e.
(a) the previous version's immunity becomes a only rebuttal presumption; (b) level of proof to overcome presumption is reduced from clear and convincing evidence to preponderance of the evidence; (c) the previous exception contained separate provisions and the word "AND," meaning you had to prove all of them to not be summary judgment'd out: now, it says "OR", which gives us the ability to pick our exception, to tailor them to the facts of the case. (d) the previous exception provided for the fraud on the government stuff to apply only if it was information required to be given by the manufacturer, it now applies to any information they gave to the government, which is a critical distinction in our car cases, where almost all the information given is through the voluntary comments provisions. (e) the legislative history is going to be very helpful on this, because we went from a draconian version, to one that includes these exceptions, which should be very helpful to us in convincing trial courts that this kind of evidence should come in.
In addition to the efforts of members of our firm, which were critical, other lawyers in CC, including past members of our firm, played a critical role. Fil Vela (lobbying other legislators continuously, and arranging lobbyists), Billy Edwards (testifying in the committee meeting), Sico, White & Braugh and Wigington & Rumley (taking victims to the legislature and assisting with p.r. efforts) and others constantly worked to keep the pressure on locally and state-wide re: the products issue. They are to be congratulated as well.
The fight is not over. We have much greater opportunities as this bill reaches the Senate. We must continue our diligence, and keep working hard to get this bill fixed. We have got to continue to get present and former clients up there for the members of the Senate to see. We must work diligently for the rest of this session to make sure TLR does not immunize tortfeasors from their victims in this state.
Mikal