## Facts

- Guillermo Mendez worked as a pipefitter for Turnaround Welding Services, Inc. (Turnaround).
- Turnaround assigned Mendez to a jobsite for its customer, Valero, which required workers at the site to undergo drug testing.
- At Turnaround’s direction, Mendez reported to Houston Harris Area Safety Council, Inc. (HASC) to provide biological samples for testing.
- At HASC, Mendez provided urine and hair samples (and also performed an alcohol breath test); because the hair on his head was too short, an HASC employee cut a hair sample from Mendez’s chest.
- HASC sent the hair sample to Psychemedics, Inc., a laboratory that performed the analysis.
- Psychemedics reported that Mendez’s hair sample tested positive for cocaine.
- Shortly after the test, Mendez reported to Valero and began working, but a Valero employee later told him he needed to provide another hair sample for additional screening.
- The second hair test was negative for cocaine.
- Even so, Turnaround terminated Mendez based on the initial positive result, but told him he could return to work if he “fixed the issue.”
- Mendez then paid for a third hair test from a different laboratory; that test was also negative for cocaine.
- Mendez completed a substance-abuse course and obtained mental-health services.
- Turnaround allowed Mendez to return to work, but it did not reassign him to the Valero jobsite (or any other jobsite).
- Mendez sued HASC and Psychemedics for negligence in collecting and testing the first hair sample, alleging the mishandling led to a false positive that cost him work opportunities and caused other damages.
- HASC and Psychemedics moved for traditional summary judgment, arguing they owed Mendez no duty of care.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for both defendants on the no-duty ground, and Mendez appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Texas negligence law, a workplace drug-test collection site and the laboratory that analyzes the specimen owe a duty of reasonable care to the employee whose specimen they collect and test.

## Decision

- The court of appeals reversed the take-nothing summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that both HASC and Psychemedics owed Mendez a common-law duty to exercise reasonable care in the collection and testing of his hair sample.
- Because duty is a question of law, the trial court erred by concluding, as a matter of law, that no duty existed and granting summary judgment on that basis.

## Legal Principles

- In Texas, the existence of a legal duty is a question of law decided by the court.
- Duty is assessed by balancing factors that include the risk, foreseeability, and likelihood of injury; the social utility of the conduct; the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the injury; and the consequences of placing that burden on the defendant.
- A duty may exist even without contractual privity when a defendant’s conduct is directed at an identifiable person and creates a foreseeable risk of harm to that person.
- A false positive in workplace drug testing can foreseeably cause serious economic harm and reputational damage to the tested employee, given how employers use test results in hiring, firing, and work-assignment decisions.
- Entities that collect specimens and generate laboratory results have substantial control over the procedures most likely to prevent erroneous results; that control weighs in favor of recognizing a duty of reasonable care to the person tested.
- Recognizing a duty of reasonable care in specimen collection and analysis is consistent with workplace drug-testing programs because accuracy aligns with the programs’ safety and compliance objectives.
- On traditional summary judgment, if the movants’ no-duty argument fails as a matter of law, summary judgment cannot be sustained on that ground and the case must proceed.

## Conclusion

The First Court of Appeals held that, on these facts, the drug-testing collector (HASC) and the laboratory (Psychemedics) owed Guillermo Mendez a duty of reasonable care in collecting and analyzing his hair specimen, and it therefore reversed the trial court’s no-duty summary judgment and remanded Mendez’s negligence claims for further proceedings.


Mendez v. Houston Harris Area Safety Council, Inc., 634 S.W.3d 154 (2021)