## Facts

- Gulf Refining Company supplied gasoline to a Mississippi planter in a reusable metal drum for fueling farm machinery.
- The drum had been in use for about nine years; workers commonly removed and replaced the bung cap by hammering it.
- Repeated hammering damaged the bung-cap threads, leaving them broken/bent and jagged.
- Evidence showed a Gulf employee knew of the damaged, jagged threads before the accident.
- Williams, a farm worker acting within the scope of employment, attempted to open the drum to refuel equipment.
- While loosening the cap in the ordinary manner, friction at the defective threads allegedly produced a spark that ignited gasoline vapors at the opening.
- Williams suffered severe burns and sued Gulf for negligence based on supplying/continuing to use an unsafe container for a highly flammable product.

## Issues

1. Whether a gasoline distributor has a duty to use reasonable care to supply gasoline in reasonably safe containers and to address known defects in those containers.
2. Whether, given knowledge of jagged bung-cap threads, it was reasonably foreseeable that opening the drum could create a spark and ignite gasoline vapors, even if the specific mishap was unusual.
3. Whether the evidence was sufficient to submit negligence and causation to the jury, making denial of a peremptory instruction (directed verdict) proper.

## Decision

- The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for Williams.
- The trial court properly denied Gulf’s request for a peremptory instruction because the evidence allowed a reasonable jury to find negligence and causation.
- The court held that distributing gasoline requires care commensurate with its dangerous character, including providing reasonably safe containers.
- Gulf’s knowledge of the defective bung threads supported a finding that the fire risk was foreseeable enough to require preventive action.
- The jury’s finding that the defect caused sparking and ignition was supported by sufficient evidence and was not disturbed on appeal.

## Legal Principles

- Those who distribute inherently dangerous substances must exercise reasonable care commensurate with the danger.
- A supplier may be negligent for furnishing or continuing to use a container known to be defective when the defect creates a foreseeable risk of ignition during ordinary use.
- Foreseeability in negligence does not require that the precise accident be common or previously experienced; liability may rest on a non-remote, foreseeable possibility of harm.
- When evidence supports findings of defect, knowledge, and causal connection, negligence and proximate cause are for the jury rather than resolved as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court upheld liability against a gasoline distributor that knew a drum’s bung threads were dangerously deformed, ruling that the combination of a highly flammable product and a known container defect made fire injury sufficiently foreseeable to submit negligence and causation to the jury, despite the event’s claimed rarity.


Gulf Refin. Co. v. Williams, 183 Miss. 723, 185 So. 234 (Miss. 1938)