Gladys Escola, a restaurant waitress, was injured when a Coca-Cola bottle exploded in her hand while she was transferring bottles from a case to a refrigerator. The bottles had been delivered by defendant and stored under the counter for at least thirty-six hours; witnesses testified the bottle did not strike anything before it burst. The bottle broke into jagged pieces, causing a deep cut to plaintiff’s hand, but the broken bottle was later discarded and not produced at trial. Plaintiff could not show a specific negligent act and relied entirely on res ipsa loquitur.
May a plaintiff injured by an exploding soft-drink bottle rely on res ipsa loquitur against the bottler when the bottle had left the bottler’s possession but there is evidence it was carefully handled and not subjected to extraneous harmful forces?
Res ipsa loquitur applies when the defendant had exclusive control of the instrumentality at the time of the alleged negligent act and the accident is of a kind that ordinarily does not occur without negligence. When the instrumentality has left defendant’s possession, the plaintiff must show it was not improperly handled or altered afterward so that a reasonable inference remains that the defect existed when defendant relinquished control.
Yes. The evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to infer that the bottle was defective when it left defendant’s control and that such a defect ordinarily would not exist without negligence by the bottler, so res ipsa loquitur applied and the judgment for plaintiff was affirmed.
The court found sufficient evidence that the bottle was not damaged after delivery: it had been stored in ordinary fashion, plaintiff handled it carefully, and witnesses said it did not hit anything before exploding. Because properly prepared carbonated-beverage bottles do not ordinarily explode when carefully handled, the jury could infer a defect existed when defendant delivered it. The court also concluded that negligence could be inferred either from overpressurization, which was within defendant’s exclusive control, or from failure to detect bottle defects through reasonable inspection and testing. Thus, even without proof of a specific negligent act, the circumstances supported submission to the jury under res ipsa loquitur.
No formal dissent. Justice Traynor concurred separately, arguing that manufacturers should be held strictly liable in tort for injuries caused by defective products placed on the market, without requiring proof of negligence.
Escola is a landmark California products-liability case because the majority extended res ipsa loquitur to exploding-bottle injuries despite the bottle having left the bottler’s possession, so long as the plaintiff showed careful handling and no intervening harmful force. Its greatest historical importance is Justice Traynor’s concurrence, which became the intellectual foundation for modern strict products liability later adopted in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., 59 Cal. 2d 57 (1963). The case also builds on California res ipsa principles discussed in Honea v. City Dairy, Inc., 22 Cal. 2d 614 (1943).
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