Opinion ID: 2960144
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Threshold Causation

Text: 23 The district court found that thermal runaway in container 250404 caused the explosion and resulting fire on the Harmony. In arriving at this ultimate finding of causation, the district court made numerous predicate findings of fact. Among them, the district court first found “beyond any reasonable doubt, that the fire started in the cal-hypo containers.” Harmony, 394 F. Supp. 2d at 669. The temperature of the third hold, where the calhypo was stowed, “ranged from approximately 35°C to approximately 40°C.” Id. at 661. When the calhypo in container 250404, made “less stable than anyone realized” by PPG’s packaging methods, id. at 669, encountered the “normal and expected” ambient temperatures in the third hold, id. at 670, it entered thermal runaway. According to the district court, this “is the most logical, if not the only logical, explanation” of what caused the fire and explosion onboard the Harmony. Id. at 669. The district court reached this conclusion in part by process of elimination, rejecting PPG’s alternative theory of causation. PPG had argued that the fire started because heat from the ship’s bunker tank subjected the calhypo to radiant heat throughout the voyage, thereby heating the calhypo containers until one of them combusted. The district court found, however, that although the heated tanks affected the hold’s temperature, the fuel was only 37°C on the day before the fire and the fuel tank was not being heated at the time of the fire.8 Id. at 661 n.19. 8 This finding was critical in distinguishing the facts here from the facts in Contship, where, under superficially similar circumstances, we held the carrier responsible rather than PPG. See Contship, 442 F.3d at 78. Whereas the district court in the instant case found that PPG’s packaging method lowered the CAT of the calhypo and thereby caused the explosion, the district court in Contship found that the carrier heated its fuel to “abornormally high temperatures,” id. at 76, “was unconcerned with the effect of heat on Cal Hypo,” id. at 79, and had “stowed the flammable, heat-sensitive Cal Hypo near the heated fuel tank, an area of the ship maximally subjected to fluctuations of heat,” id. 24 On appeal, PPG argues that two of the district court’s discrete factual findings are clearly erroneous. First, PPG charges, there “is no substantial evidence supporting the estimated . . . hold temperature of ‘approximately 40°C.’” Second, PPG asserts, the district court’s finding that the calhypo in question had a CAT of below 41°C “is not substantiated by the record.” We are unpersuaded. In making these findings, the district court drew from a voluminous record as well as the testimony of assorted opposing witnesses. In light of the record as a whole, these discrete findings are plausible; we are not left with the definite and firm conviction that error has been committed. Accordingly, the district court’s finding that the dangerousness of PPG’s calhypo caused the explosion was not clearly erroneous.