Coca-Cola Bottling Co. v. McBride

• Decision Date: 21 October 1929
• Docket Number: 150
• Citation: 20 S.W.2d 862,180 Ark. 193
• Parties: COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY v. MCBRIDE
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

20 S.W.2d 862

180 Ark. 193

COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY v. MCBRIDE

No. 150

Supreme Court of Arkansas

October 21, 1929

Appeal from Crittenden Circuit Court; G. E. Keck, Judge; affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

Edward B. Klewer, Sam Costen and Wils Davis, for appellant.

W B. Scott, for appellee.

OPINION

HUMPHREYS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment for $ 750, rendered in the circuit court of Crittenden County in favor of appellee against appellant, in an action based upon the alleged negligence of appellant in bottling and selling coca-cola which contained a poisonous substance.

Appellant contends for a reversal of the judgment upon the alleged ground that there is no substantial evidence in the record showing that appellant was negligent in bottling the coca-cola.

Appellee who was clerking in a store owned by David Swartz, in the town of Earl, at the instance of her employer went to David Haddad's cold drink stand, about 150 feet from the Swartz store, to buy several bottles of coca-cola, which, by agreement of the parties to the suit, had been manufactured by appellant at its bottling plant at Wynne, Arkansas. She bought two or three bottles, which were opened by Haddad and handed to her, whereupon she immediately returned with them to the store. Appellee testified that, when she returned to the store, she drank a part of one bottle, and stopped, because she swallowed a hard substance; that, looking into the bottle, she saw an open safety pin, and something black; that she poured the balance of the coca-cola out into her hand, and found that it contained a black sediment; that whet she drank poisoned and nauseated her in a few moments; that a physician was called, who took her home in his car; that, after being helped out of the automobile and assisted into the house and ordered to bed by the physician, she entered the bathroom, became dizzy, fell, and injured her back; that the following two or three days she suffered greatly from nausea, and more or less from the same cause for a week; that thereafter she was very nervous, and that since the fall she had suffered continuously with pains in her back.

She was corroborated in the testimony in all particulars by Mr. Swartz until the physician took her away from the store, and by the physician who took her home, in the remainder of her testimony, except as to the fall in the bathroom.

Appellant introduced testimony to the effect that the safety pin would not have poisoned the coca-cola, and that it and the black substance or sediment could not have been in the old bottle before being refilled under the system employed by it in cleansing, sterilizing and inspecting its bottles before refilling them, nor could have entered the bottle during the process of refilling and inspection thereof, under the period and...