Yes. The company that caused the leak is responsible. The court said the danger from the gas leak was still active and hadn't been resolved. The company's mistake put the worker in a very scary and dangerous situation. It's easy to predict that someone working on a live gas leak would panic at any sign of fire. Because the original danger was still 'live,' the bug sprayer and the shout of 'fire' didn't break the chain of blame. They were just part of a series of events that started with the broken gas pipe.

Yes, the companies might have caused Mr. Henry's injuries because they didn't prove that their mistake definitely didn't lead to the accident. They also didn't show that they couldn't have guessed something like this might happen, or that something else was entirely to blame. We're sending the case back to the lower court because the connection between what the companies did and how Mr. Henry got hurt makes sense. The dangerous situation they created was still happening when Mr. Henry got hurt - the gas was still leaking. It makes sense that someone would come to fix the leak, that it would be dangerous, and that they might get hurt if they thought there was a fire. The smoke from the bug spray machine doesn't completely remove the companies' responsibility. This case is different from other cases where the dangerous situation was over before someone got hurt.

Yes. A defendant's negligence in creating a dangerous, ongoing condition can remain the proximate cause of injury even when an intervening act triggers the final harm. The court reasoned that the defendants' negligence did more than merely furnish the condition for the injury; it created an active, ongoing crisis. Unlike prior cases where the forces generated by the defendant's negligence had "come to rest," here the gas was still actively leaking, making the situation inherently dangerous. It was foreseeable that a repair crew working on a live gas leak would be apprehensive and that any sign of fire, real or perceived, would cause immediate flight, which could lead to injury. The mosquito fogger and the shout of "fire" were concurring causes, not superseding causes, because they acted upon the dangerous situation the defendants had created, and the chain of causation from the initial negligence was unbroken.

Yes, the defendants' alleged negligence could have proximately caused the plaintiff's injuries because the defendants failed to prove as a matter of law that their actions were not a 'cause in fact' of the injuries, that the injuries were unforeseeable, or that there was a superseding cause. We reverse the summary judgment because the connection between defendants' acts and Henry's injuries is not too attenuated to constitute legal cause. The crisis created by NHPL was ongoing - the dangerous gas leak had not been repaired, and therefore the forces generated by NHPL's acts had not 'come to rest.' It was foreseeable that an emergency crew would be dispatched to fix the gas leak, that the crew would be in danger, and that any indication of fire would cause immediate flight during which crew members might be injured. The defendants did not prove that the intervening cause (the mosquito fogger smoke) was a superseding cause rather than a concurring cause. The case is distinguishable from precedents like Lear Siegler and Union Pump Co. v. Allbritton because here, the dangerous situation created by the defendants' alleged negligence was still ongoing at the time of the injury.

Henry v. Houston Lighting & Power Co.

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