In some vain hope (I have an on occasional hope) that someone has a clue (that I apparently haven't) what might be going on here I thought I would share a pain :)

I am using an inverter gate (74lvc1G14) to drive the reset input to an MSC1213. The gate input is a TPS3813K33 with 10K pull up (this is an active LOW reset device). What's the problem? The gate input is high (IE pulled up and the reset device is not generating a reset) and yet the output of the gate is high (3V). The gate ONLY drives the MSC1213, the only device on the output of the gate besides the MSC is a 10K pull down resister (for some reason). This is an inverter so it should be pulled low with the input being high. Unfortunately being surface mount it's hard to check current paths etc.
The following image summarizes what I just described. The circuit is pretty simple so I'm not sure that would be of any use.

The gate has been replaced (in case of defective IC). So what else is there possible that can be wrong? Could the MSC be pulling the gate high or .. what?

Thoughts and inquiries welcome.

Stephen