LORETO LUCIANO DE SALAS vs. SAN MIGUEL BREWERY CAR (Page-12)

.delivered to a refrigerator in his establishment. At the time of injury, ABC
Beer was produced solely by Aztec Brewing Co.; the beer was bottled and
cased at Aztec's San Diego plant; the cases were placed by Aztec's
employee on conveyors which carried them into trucks operated by La Salle
Tracking Co, They were transported to the Los Angeles warehouse of
Associated Brewer Distributing Co, where drivers unloaded them unto
conveyors which carried them into warehouse. Upon receipt of plaintiff's
order for 75 cases, they were loaded by Associated's employees onto
Associated Trucks on the night of August 21, 1948. An Associated driver
delivered them to plaintiff the next day;"

And the Appellate Court, reversing the decision of the Lower Court,
absolved the manufacturer, reasoning:

"After defendant parted with the bottle, it passed through several
hands before it exploded. Under the circumstances, proof that defendant had
failed to exercise ordinary care while bottle was in its possession would not
alone justify a conclusion that defendant's negligence was the cause of the
explosion, since the defective or dangerous condition of the bottle might
have developed after it left defendant's possession;"

Again, in that case, the dismissal was due to the fact that the court was convinced that
the intervention, the possession of a third person after the bottle had left the hands of the
manufacturer, was sufficient to show that probably, the cause which brought about the
explosion was not its negligence in the production of the beer; nevertheless, it will be seen
that the Courts in those eases cited, did not abide by definite rules but were looking at the
particular facts of each case, decided that in such or other situations, the manufacturer was
responsible because the evidence was sufficient to prove its negligence, and in one of those
cases, the court applied the principle of resjpsa loquitur, the case of Auzene, or was not
responsible, or because the beer had passed to the possession of another party in the
meanwhile, before it was sold to the complainant or because of the passage of time in which
he had been in possession of the bottle, he had been negligent in its safekeeping; except in
one eastj these decisions are unanimous and indeed, in these cases spontaneous explosions
occurred and always the question to be resolved by the courts was who had to bear the loss
because of them, or more properly speaking, if the victim had or had no right to ask for
indemnity form the manufacturer.

CONSIDERING: That, on the other hand, in the present case, the Court is well
convinced that the explosion was a spontaneous explosion and afterwards there were no other
intervening elements which can point to negligence on the part of Loreto or any other person,
because the defendant sold it at 7 a.m. of the day in question, and it was placed inside the
cooler which was also supplied by the defendant at the same time, and shortly after four
hours from it was when the act of the plaintiff in raising its cover, when the bottle exploded;
thus in the light of the cited decisions, neither does it seem correct nor much less just to
declare that under these circumstances the plaintiff had no reason to complain against the