Opinion ID: 2960144
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: PPG’s Packaging Method

Text: PPG manufactures its calhypo at a plant in Natrium, West Virginia. To package the calhypo stowed on the Harmony, PPG used thick cardboard drums that weighed 136 kilograms (about 300 pounds) each when full. PPG loaded the drums on wooden pallets, four drums to a pallet, and immediately shrinkwrapped each four-drum bundle. Thirty pallets were then packed into each container, stacked up in three layers of ten pallets each. Each layer of pallets was divided into two rows of five pallets. For its shipment on the Harmony, PPG prepared ten containers in this manner. The district court found that this packaging method was likely to have lowered the CAT of the calhypo; stacking the drums made it “harder for the heat to dissipate” while “the container walls inhibit[ed] the ventilation of the drums.” Id. at 657. The calhypo was approximately 34°C when it was packaged, “36 hours after [manufacturing], under circumstances that did not permit it to cool down.” Id. at 660. After packaging the calhypo, PPG trucked the containers to Baltimore, where agents for Cho Yang Shipping Co. arranged transport to Norfolk, Virginia. In Norfolk, the charterers’ stevedores facilitated stowage of the calhypo onboard the Harmony in neighboring Newport News, Virginia. 7 C. The Location of Calhypo in the Hold of the Harmony The stevedores stowed the containers contiguously on the far port side of Harmony’s third hold. Three of the containers—those occupying slots 270802, 250802, and 250804—sat adjacent to a J-shaped “heated port side bunker [fuel] tank,” and they were separated from the tank wall by twelve inches of empty space. Id. at 661. Two of these three containers—those occupying slots 270802 and 250802—sat directly atop the bunker tank, separated from the tank wall by less than twelve inches of empty space. In other words, two containers were exposed directly to the radiant heat of the bunker tank on two sides, and one container was exposed to radiant heat on one side. The remaining containers lay amidships, block-stowed contiguously with these three containers. One of these remaining containers, occupying slot 250404, sat “three in from the port side” bunker tank and “two up from the bottom.” Id. at 667. As the district court concluded from an exhaustive review of the physical evidence, this container was the source of the explosion and resulting fire. Id. at 667–69. Both the Captain and Chief Mate of the Harmony approved this stowage arrangement.