Owens v. Moberly Oil Co.

• Decision Date: 04 December 1922
• Docket Number: No. 14529.,14529.
• Citation: 245 S.W. 369
• Parties: OWENS v. MOBERLY OIL CO.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

245 S.W. 369

OWENS v. MOBERLY OIL CO.

No. 14529.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

December 4, 1922.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Saline County; Samuel Davis, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Action by Walter B. Owens against the Moberly Oil Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Albert R. James, of Marshall, and Willard P. Cave, of Moberly, for appellant.

Robert M. Reynolds and Louis J. Rasse, both of Marshall, for respondent.

BLAND, J.

This is an action for damages caused by the burning of a blacksmith shop and its contents. There was a verdict and judgment in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $2,500, and defendant has appealed.

Defendant insists that its demurrer to the evidence should have been sustained. Plaintiff and defendant are widely apart as to the facts shown in the record. A careful stating of the facts gleaned from the record will decide this case, for the reason that there is not a great deal of law involved.

The facts taken in their most favorable light to plaintiff show that plaintiff was the owner of a blacksmith shop in the town of Wanamaker, Mo. The dimensions of this building were 21 feet x 55 feet, and its front, which was 21 feet in width, was toward the west. There was a door in the front of the building 10 feet in width, and high enough to permit an automobile to be driven into the shop. This opening was closed by two doors which swung inward when open. The building had a wooden awning in front which was about 6 feet wide. Under this awning there was a storage tank 10 or 11 feet long, having a capacity of 550 gallons, where gasoline was kept. Defendant sold gasoline to plaintiff, and delivered the same by means of a tank truck. On May 25, 1920, defendant's agent, Parks, was delivering gasoline to plaintiff's storage tank. This receptacle had a filler or intake pipe extending about 4 inches above the surface of the ground. The pipe was about 3 feet south of the north line of the building, and the same distance west of the front of the building, or midway between the outer edge of the awning and the west line of the building. Defendant's tank was divided into three compartments, two for gasoline and one for coal oil; each compartment had a faucet in the rear for the purpose of extracting the contents. The truck containing the tank was backed up to the intake pipe, and Parks was sitting down, facing west, attending to the extracting of the gasoline which was coming out of two 1½-inch faucets, 10 inches apart, and flowing into two funnels, the lower funnel being inserted in the filler pipe and receiving the flow of one faucet, the other funnel being inserted in the lower one and under the other faucet. After the gasoline had been running into the storage tank for about 10 minutes, and 200 gallons had been emptied, an explosion occurred, resulting in the destruction of the blacksmith shop and delivery track by fire.

Defendant's theory of the cause of the explosion is quite different from that of plaintiff. Plaintiff in his petition pleaded that the cause of the explosion was that vapor from the gasoline permeated the atmosphere thereabouts, and came into contact with fire in a forge situated in the blacksmith shop, and introduced evidence tending to show this fact. Defendant contends that the gasoline vapors were ignited by one Stallsworth, an employee of plaintiff, who was sitting in the open doorway of the blacksmith shop, and that the vapors were ignited from a pipe which Stallsworth was using at the time, or by a match which it is contended Stallsworth struck. Defendant contends that, at any rate, there is no evidence that the fire in the forge had anything to do with the explosion.

Parks denied that the gasoline was running from the two faucets at the same time, but testified that he emptied one receptacle of the delivery tank through its faucet, and was emptying another at the time of the explosion. However, the testimony of Stallsworth is to the contrary and as above set out. The distance from the faucets to the filler pipe was 20 inches, so the lower funnel must have been about 10 inches from the faucet that poured gasoline into it, as Parks testified that the two funnels, which he claimed he used while draining from each faucet, practically filled up the space between the faucet and the intake pipe. It is therefore apparent that a large quantity of gasoline had been emptied through the air for 10 minutes of time before the explosion, which the evidence tends to show would permit considerable vaporization. There was testimony on the part of plaintiff that this was not a careful and prudent way of handling gasoline, but that the proper way would be by running it through a hose attached to the faucet at one end and the intake pipe at the other. The testimony shows that it was a common thing to use funnels and buckets where it was impossible to run the gasoline from the faucet to the storage tank on account of the situation of the latter two with reference to each other, or when was desired to measure the gasoline by means of buckets, but where buckets are used there is a time that a faucet is turned off, and the vapor has time to mix with the air and float away.

At the time of the explosion Stallsworth was "sitting upon the sill of the door, practically upon the ground, and about 5 feet from the funnels. The point where the gasoline was being emptied was 3 feet from the nearest side of the door; therefore, there was evidence from which the jury could say that Stallsworth was sitting 2 feet from the north edge of the font door of the blacksmith shop. There was a closed window north of the doorway, which had an...