Thе plaintiff bought at a retail shop in Boston a bottle of perfume manufactured by the defendant and sold by it to the retailer. There was evidence that the plaintiff suffered a second degree- burn when she applied
Over thе exception of the defendant, the plaintiff was permitted to introduce the testimony of two lay witnesses and one admittedly qualified expert physician, to the effect that each of them had applied to his or her own skin perfume from the same bottle and that it had irritated, inflamed and injured the skin. The burden of proof was on the plaintiff to show nеgligence. The defendant could not be found negligent unless injury to the skin of a consumer from the contents of the bottle was to be anticipated. The plaintiff was not required to prove that a majority of consumers would be injuriously affected. "It is enough if a sufficient number are susceptible so that a jury could reasonably say that the defendant ought to have known and recognized the danger of injury and ought to have guarded against it.” Taylor v. Newcomb Baking Co.
The evidence in question was properly admitted to show the probability that the injury to the plaintiff was caused by some harmful ingredient in the perfume rather than by her own peculiar and unforseeable susceptibility.
In this case the defendant had full control of the manufacture of the perfume and the filling of the bottle. No examination of the contents of the bottle by any middleman or retailer was practicable. There was evidence that when bought by the plaintiff the perfumе “was still in the same condition as when bottled by the defendant,” that the contents of the bottle were harmful, and that the defendant did not know all the ingredients used. Assuming a duty of care, we think that a finding was warranted that in some way the defendant was negligent. If the plaintiff had bought the perfume directly from the defendant, a verdict in her favor on the ground of negligence would hаve been supported by the evidence. Doyle v. Continental Baking Co.
Plainly the defendant, when it manufactured and bottled its perfume, including the bottle in question, and put it into the channels of trade, expected that those channels would carry each bottle into the hands of some ultimate consumer who would be likely to apply the contents to her skin. If any bottle should contain a harmful ingredient, injury to some unknown consumer rather than to a middleman or retailer must have been anticipated.
In principle, a manufacturer or other person owning or controlling а thing that is dangerous in its nature or is in a dangerous condition, either to his knowledge or as a result of his want of reasonable care in manufacture or inspection, who deals with or disposes of that thing in a way that he foresees or in the exercise of reasonable care ought to foresee will probably carry that thing into contact with some person, known or unknown, who will probably be ignorant of the danger, owes a legal duty to every such person to use reasonable care to prevent injury to him.
The principié stated in the preceding рaragraph has been applied in many decisions. In Sarna v. American Bosch Magneto Corp.
In the celebrated case of MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.
Of course there are limits to that principle. One is that where the person injured comes into contact with the dangerous thing only by a tresрass or as a bare licensee, the right of the owner to use his property as he pleases, short of maintaining a nuisance, precludes any duty of care to any such person even though his presence on the property could
There are practical dangers in the application by juries of the principle under discussion. These are not apparent in the present case, in which tampering with the contents of the bottle would have been most unlikely. But where the thing in question is subject to change by wear or crystallization or deterioration or neglect or unskilful repair or improper handling, perhaps in a course of years, there is danger that juries may overlook the nearer causes and wrongly attribute the injury to some antecedent neglect of the manufacturer or supplier, and do so at a time when
That asserted general rule had its origin in Winterbottom v. Wright, 10 M. & W. 109, decided in 1842. The declaration in that case did not allege negligence on the part of the furnisher of a mail coach, but alleged merely that he furnished an unsafe coach in violation of his contract, with the result that the coach broke down and hurt the plaintiff coachman. Since the plaintiff was not a party to the contract upon which he based his claim, there can be no doubt that the demurrer was rightly sustained. Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A. C. 562, 588, 589, 608. MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.
One of those exceptions excluded food and beverages for human beings from the asserted general rule of nonliability. Tompkins v. Quaker Oats Co.
All these exceptions as at first understood and applied in this Commonwealth left a large field for the application of the asserted general rule of nonliability in the absence of privity of contract. In a number of cases manufacturers, invoking that general rule were absolved from responsibility for the consequences of their want of care.
The doctrine of the MacPherson case is now generally accepted. Am. Law Inst. Restatement: Torts, §§ 394-402. Harper, Torts (1933) § 106. Prosser, Torts (1941) 206-210, 673-688. Winfield, Torts (1937) 430, 566-569, 572-579. Seavey, 52 Harv. L. Rev. 376-379. Jeanblаnc, 24 Va. L. Rev. 134. Feezer, 37 Mich. L. Rev. 1. Its acceptance has brought all dangerous things into the same class as the “inherently dangerous” things to which the principle already stated has always been applied. The MacPherson case caused the exception to swallow the asserted general rule of nonliability, leaving nothing upon which that rule could oрerate. Wherever that case is accepted, that rule in truth is abolished, and ceases to be part of the law. Yet some courts have continued to render lip service to it (Spencer v. Madsen, 142 Fed. [2d] 820; Macres v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Inc.
In many recent cases that asserted general rule of non-liability to persons not in privity of contract has been denied, either in terms or in effect, and the principle stated earlier in this opinion has been applied.
Upon the principle of liability that is stated earlier in this opinion and that governs this case, the verdict in favor of the plaintiff was warranted. There was error in entering a verdict for the defendant under leave reserved. The plaintiff’s exceptions are sustained. Those of the defendant are overruled. Judgment is to be entered in favor of the plaintiff upon the verdict returned by the jury.
So ordered.
Notes
Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940) §§ 442, 457. Hunt v. Lowell Gas Light Co.
Of course in an action of contract, such as an action upon an express or implied warranty, want of privity of contract would be a defence. Colby v. First National Stores Inc.
The present case does not require consideration of the limitatiоns put upon the principle in Am. Law Inst. Restatement: Torts, § 395, that the plaintiff must be one of “those who lawfully use it for a purpose for which it is manufactured” or one of those "whom the supplier should expect to be in the vicinity of its probable use.” A similar idea apparently is expressed by Lord Atkin in Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A. C. 562, 581, in his requirement that there be “proximity” in the sense of “such close and direct
In Carter v. Towne,
Sarna v. American Bosch Magneto Corp.
McDonald v. Snelling,
Turner v. Page,
Davidson v. Nichols,
Another ground of liability to a remote vendee existed where a manufacturer made false representations to the ultimate consumer, giving rise to an action for deceit. Roberts v. Anheuser Busch Brewing Association,
Lebourdais v. Vitrified Wheel Co.
Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A. C. 562. Grant v. Australian Knitting Mills, Ltd. [1936] A. C. 85, 105 Am. L. R. 1483. Mathews v. Coca-Cola Co. of Canada Ltd. (1944) Ont. 207, (1944) 2 D. L. R. 355. Johnson v. Cadillac Motor Car Co.
