Opinion ID: 41387
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claimants alleging physical damage

Text: As noted above, Mason and Advanced Materials claim to have suffered physical damage. Mason claims it lost eighty-eight boxes of dressed crabs that spoiled in a freezer when law enforcement officials shut off the electricity during the evacuation. Advanced Materials claims that two manufacturing runs had to be prematurely terminated and the company lost the materials in those runs and could not sell the products. The district court concluded that Mason’s and Advanced Materials’s damages met the physical damage requirement of TESTBANK. Appellants argue that even if Mason and Advanced Materials suffered damage, the damage was not directly caused by the allision and was unforeseeable. Accordingly, they contend the district court erred in denying their motions for summary judgment as to these claims as well. Mason and Advanced Materials argue that their 11 damages were foreseeable and that foreseeability should not be determined on a motion for summary judgment. Contraryto the district court’s conclusion, neither of these claimants suffered physical damage as a result of the allision. Mason’s crabs spoiled because the electricity was turned off during the evacuation, not because of contact with the barge, the bridge, or the gaseous cargo. Likewise, Advanced Materials claims losses from its inability to sell products that were in the process of being manufactured; it is not claiming that its property was damaged as a direct result of the allision. Claimants’ reliance on Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. C.F. Bean Corp. (Consolidated I), 772 F.2d 1217 (5th Cir. 1985) is misplaced. There, a dredge struck and ruptured a pipeline, which caused a reduction in gas pressure and supply to Consolidated’s power plant. We held that TESTBANK did not bar recovery because Consolidated suffered physical damage to its equipment. Id. at 1222. Unlike the circumstances presented in Consolidated I, here, the allision did not physically cause the disruption in electrical power nor did it physically impact Advanced Materials’s facilities. Accordingly, Advanced Materials and Morton have not raised a genuine issue of material fact as to whether they suffered physical damage to a proprietary interest as a result of the allision. Moreover, even if we were to conclude that Mason’s and Advanced Materials’s inability to sell their products qualified as physical damage for purposes of TESTBANK, they would not be entitled to recover because their damages were not foreseeable. In Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. C.F. Bean Corp. (Consolidated II), 833 F.2d 65, 68 (5th Cir. 1988), we stated: We perceive a harm to be the foreseeable consequence of an act or omission if harm of a general sort to persons of a general class might have been anticipated by a reasonably thoughtful person, as a probable result of the act or omission, considering the interplay of natural forces and likely human intervention. 12 We reasoned that injury to property and persons from the escaping gas or from a fire were examples of foreseeable consequences of negligent dredging. Id. Therefore, we concluded that, even though Consolidated suffered physical damage, the physical damage was unforeseeable. Id. In the instant case, as in Consolidated II, the foreseeable harms as a result of escaping gas would likely be damage to property and people from the gas or from a fire. Further, in the case at bar, the connection between the loss of electricity and the allision is even more remote than that between the reduction in gas supply and the negligence in Consolidated II. In Consolidated II, the negligent dredging damaged a gas pipeline which disrupted the flow of gas to electric turbines causing them to shut down. Here, the barge allided with a bridge, causing the release of gas, which resulted in a mandatory evacuation during which the law enforcement officials turned off the electricity. The spoiling of Mason’s crabs and the premature shut down of Advanced Materials’s manufacturing run due to the evacuation and loss of electricity were simply not foreseeable results of the release of the gaseous cargo. Accordingly, the district court erred in denying Appellants’ motion for partial summary judgment as to the claims of Mason and Advanced Materials.