Home Fire Insurance v. Southwestern Engineering Corp.

This appeal is from a judgment recovered by the plaintiff against the defendant in an action wherein the plaintiff, an insurance company, was subrogated to the rights of its assured. Primarily, the validity of the judgment depends upon the correctness of the conclusion reached by the trial court in substance that while the assured was engaged in procuring from the defendant at its place of business a truck-load of casing-head gasoline, the truck, belonging to the assured and on which the gasoline was intended to be transported, was consumed by fire which was caused by and through the negligence of the defendant.

Prom the evidence the trial judge was justified in concluding that casing-head gasoline is a volatile substance of a very dangerous, explosive, character; that in loading the truck the methods employed by the defendant were negligent in that they were “makeshift” and permitted the escape from such gasoline of large quantities of gas which, owing greatly to the stillness of the air and the foggy conditions then and there present, first settled about the truck, which, to the knowledge of the defendant, was being loaded in a large oil-producing area and in an atmosphere…