Caterpillar, Inc. and B.d. Holt Company, Petitioners v. Cipriano Shears, Respondents

Summary

The Texas Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, holding that Caterpillar Inc. and B.D. Holt Company owed no duty to warn of the obvious risk of operating a front‑end loader without its removable ROPS and that the loader was not defectively designed because no feasible safer alternative existed; consequently Shears recovered nothing. Justice Spector dissented, arguing that the risk was not so indisputably obvious and that the jury should decide the duty to warn.