Gould v. Slater Woolen Co.
| Decision Date | 21 June 1888 |
| Citation | 147 Mass. 315,17 N.E. 531 |
| Parties | GOULD v. SLATER WOOLEN CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
E.B. Callender and Louis Girardin, for plaintiff.
Where in the manufacture of an article, poisonous chemicals and drugs dangerous to health or life are used, it is the duty of the manufacterer to so neutralize the action and counteract the effect of the poisons that the finished article shall not be dangerous to health and life, provided, always, that the use made of the article is one the manufacturer must have intended. French v. Vining, 102 Mass. 132; Giroux v. Stedman, 145 Mass. 443, 14 N.E. 538. The manufacturer must be presumed to have known that bichromate of potash, or the other chrome compounds, were dangerous, if such is a well-known fact; and, knowing it, he was bound to guard against its dangerous influence. Wellington v. Oil Co., 104 Mass. 64; Minor v. Sharon, 112 Mass 487. The court cannot say, as matter of law, that the defendant's duty is simply to the majority,--to the well to the unimpressionable,--any more than to say, as a matter of law, that it is negligence for a blind man to go about the crowded part of a city. Smith v. Wildes, 143 Mass. 556, 10 N.E. 446.
W.S.B. Hopkins, for defendant.
The question in this case is whether there was any evidence sufficient to go to the jury to show that the defendant was negligent in the performance of any duty which it owed to the plaintiff, as one of the purchasers of the cloths manufactured by the defendant; and we are of the opinion that there was not. The plaintiff's action was brought on September 22, 1884. According to the testimony of the expert witness introduced by the plaintiff, it had never been shown until 1886 that any cases of poisoning had occurred like the plaintiff's. For all that appears, the plaintiff's was the first instance of injury that ever was known to arise from the cause alleged in the declaration. All that the plaintiff showed against the defendant was that it used an article for dyeing its cloths which was the most common mordant used in wool dyeing, which was also used very extensively in dyeing cotton stockings black, which, so far as then known, had never caused injury to anybody who merely handled the cloths, and which the defendant did not know or suppose, and had no reason to know or suppose, to be injurious; and under these circumstances, although there...
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