The Back Alley Archives

On December 28, 2005, David Calder tried to start a fire in his wood-burning stove in his trailer home—by inserting the nozzle of a $3.99 gas can into the stove to pour gas onto the fire, which Calder admitted was "stupid." (The container itself had "KEEP AWAY FROM FLAMES, PILOT LIGHTS, STOVES, HEATERS, ELECTRIC MOTORS, AND OTHER SOURCES OF IGNITION." impressed into the plastic; nevertheless, Calder included a failure-to-warn claim in his suit.) The resulting catastrophe killed his two-year-old daughter and severely burned Calder. This was, Calder argued, the fault of Blitz USA, the manufacturer of the gas can, for not including more idiot-proofing, though no gas container could reasonably protect against the idiocy of Calder's actions. A Clinton-appointed federal district judge refused to throw the case out, and refused to let Blitz USA argue the "state-of-the-art" product liability defense or argue that it complied with government regulations for the manufacture of gas cans. A sympathetic jury found millions of dollars of damages, and blamed Blitz USA to the tune of 70% of the damages. So Blitz USA, which used to employ 117 people at a factory in Oklahoma to manufacture about 75% of the gas cans sold in the US, is liquidating in bankruptcy, and Americans will have to get their gas cans from Chinese manufacturers—or resort to even more unsafe containers like milk jugs if there is a gas-can shortage during this year's hurricane season. So trial lawyer greed and a trial-lawyer-friendly judicial appointment has cost jobs, made Americans less safe, and increased carbon emissions from the need to import bulky gas cans from overseas. (Tulsa World via@billchilds;Calder v. Blitz USA 10th Circuit brief)

A federal jury ordered gas can-maker Blitz USA, an Oklahoma company, to pay $6.1 million to the family of a 2-year-old girl who died from burn injuries following a gas can explosion and fire in 2005.



While Hailey's family was victorious at trial, jurors did hold her father, David Calder, partially responsible for the burn accident. Calder acknowledges that he's partly to blame. He and his children were set ablaze by the gas can. Calder was burned on 30 percent of his body and spent two months in the University of Utah hospital's burn unit. A son also suffered burn injuries.



The family was in a mobile home in December 2005 when Calder tried to add gasoline to a wood-burning stove fire. The flames got into the gas can, causing an explosion.



"I poured just a teeny bit on there and it went right into the can, and it exploded. It blew up," said Calder, adding that he patted flames off his daughter who sat nearby. "I was engulfed in flames myself, and it was very painful."



Prior to filing the lawsuit, the child's family tried to settle for $80,000 but the company refused. During the legal proceedings, Blitz allegedly acknowledged that its own research shows a substantial number of its customers use gas cans to pour gasoline as a fire accelerant.



Jurors sided with the victim's family. Family attorneys argued that a flame arrester would have prevented flames from shooting into the gas can, and that such devices cost about 5 cents and are present on non-Blitz cans. Sadly, this is not Blitz USA's first or last legal problem related to this gas can. As recently as last year, in 2009, a similar lawsuit was filed in Texas for work-related burn injuries suffered at the hands of a Blitz gas can without a flame arrester.



These gas cans are unreasonably dangerous and defectively designed. Without a flame arrester, flashback of flames into the gas can is probable and obviously very harmful. This is an inexpensive safety fix gor Blitz USA, and the arresters have been commonly used for this purpose for many years.