In In re Continental Gen. Tire, Inc., 979 S.W.2d 609, 610-613, 42 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 141 (Tex. 1998) the Court held that for the plaintiffs to obtain discovery they were required to establish that the information was necessary or essential to the fair adjudication of the case, weighing the requesting party's need for the information against the potential of harm to the resisting party from disclosure. The Court concluded that the plaintiffs had failed to make this showing. The Court noted that the uncontroverted evidence from the defendant's expert was that "the physical properties of a tire cannot be determined from an examination of a compound formula; rather, the finished tire itself must be tested." Thus, there was no evidence that a defect in skim stock could be proved using the formula for its components. The Court also noted that the plaintiffs had no other manufacturer's formula to compare to the defendant's formula. One could not tell from the formula itself whether it was better or worse than any other formula. Finally, the Court stated that the plaintiffs had offered no evidentiary support for their theory that the skim stock formula would show whether sulfur found on the defective tire was a component of the skim stock or had been improperly introduced during manufacture.