Court Opinion

ID: 9777702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:20:44.560464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:59.898700
License: Public Domain

HEDGES, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s disposition of this case. I do not disagree with the majority’s analysis of the duty to warn that gasoline is dangerous. I disagree that that particular *815duty was the duty about which the case was tried.
The record and appellee’s brief persuade me that the duty on which plaintiff prevailed at trial was the duty of appellant to warn the McCartneys that the gasoline was tainted with water, not that spilled gasoline in general is dangerous. Had this warning been given, Kastis argued, the McCartneys would not have bought the gasoline, and the inexorable chain of events leading to Kastis’s injuries would have been avoided.
I believe that appellant had a duty to warn the McCartneys of the tainted gasoline. I do not believe that appellant is liable to Kastis for breach of that duty. The circumstances surrounding the injuries are too remotely connected with the Ritz’s conduct or product to constitute a legal cause of the injuries.
Legal cause is not established if the defendant’s conduct or product does no more than furnish the condition that makes the plaintiff’s injury possible. Union Pump Co. v. Allbritton, 898 S.W.2d 773, 776 (Tex.1995). I believe that the failure to warn the McCart-neys that the gas was contaminated did no more than create a condition that made the injuries possible. I conclude that the circumstances surrounding the injuries are too remotely connected with the Ritz’s conduct or product to constitute a legal cause of the injuries. See Lear Siegler, Inc. v. Perez, 819 S.W.2d 470, 472 (Tex.1991).