Court Opinion

ID: 9443705
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:28:15.548334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:34.821981
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Upon reconsideration, I am convinced that the case should have been submitted to the jury under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur as it prevails in Texas. The truck driver testified that when, the fire first started it seemed to be coming from between the truck and the storage tank and was burning on the top and side of the truck. The photographic exhibits tend to the same effect, showing, the truck badly damaged by fire and the fire at that point then extinguished but raging at two of the tanks with the third tank not yet on fire. There was evidence that the truck driver stated immediately after the fire that, “Just as soon as he kicked the hatch the blaze started”. Admittedly the truck and the *773truck driver were under the control of the defendants. The jury, I think, would have been warranted in finding that the fire originated from something done in the loading operations, and that either the defendants’ truck or their truck driver was the “thing” that caused the injury. If the jury so believed, then, under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur as applied in the Texas courts, Tyreco Refining Co. v. Cook, Tex. Civ.App., 110 S.W.2d 219, 220, 222, it was authorized, but not compelled, to find the defendants guilty of actionable negligence.
I, therefore, respectfully dissent.