Jose BARRERA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS AND COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellant

GEE, Circuit Judge:

Du Pont appeals Jose Barrera’s $300,000 judgment for personal injury. Not without some difficulty, we affirm.

In August 1976, Mr. Barrera, then a 36-year-old pipefitter, was working for an independent contractor on a job at a Du Pont plant near Beaumont, Texas. At the time of the incident, Mr. Barrera was grinding the edges of a freshly cut pipe that Du Pont had cleared and purged, certifying that it was safe for such work. Instead, while Mr. Barrera was grinding, perched with a helper on a scaffold some ten to fifteen feet off the ground, some gas from the severed line…