Opinion ID: 2075077
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Res Ipsa

Text: The Latin expression res ipsa loquitur became part and parcel of legal jargon because of a remark made by Chief Baron Pollock as the defendant's counsel attempted to show cause why a judgment for fifty pounds sterling should not be entered for the plaintiff in Byrne v. Boadle, 2 H. & C. 722, 725, 159 Eng.Rep. 299, 300 (1863), where the court was concerned with the plight of a plaintiff pedestrian who was struck by a barrel of flour which rolled out of an open window of the defendant's warehouse. As the defendant's counsel was arguing that there was not a scintilla of evidence [of negligence], unless the occasion is of itself evidence of negligence, the Chief Baron interjected, There are certain cases of which it may be said res ipsa loquitur, and this seems one of them. Consequently, notwithstanding an inability to show why the barrel rolled out the window, the judgment for Byrne was sustained upon a showing that the defendant was in possession of the warehouse. In essence, the court ruled that negligence and causation might be established by circumstantial evidence. Recently, in Montuori v. Narragansett Electric Co., R.I., 418 A.2d 5, 11, 12 (1980), [7] in attempting to unravel the overlap, so called, between the doctrines of res ipsa loquitur and exclusive control, we noted that in 1891 the court, apparently for the first time, in Cox v. Providence Gas Co., 17 R.I. 199, 200, 21 A. 344, 344-45 (1891), recognized that the happening of the accident may in itself amount to prima facie evidence of negligence, when the cause or instrumentality of the accident is under the defendant's control, and when such an accident does not ordinarily occur if due precautions be taken   . Later, the cases of Kearner v. Charles S. Tanner Co., 31 R.I. 203, 214-15, 76 A. 833, 837 (1910), and LaForrest v. O'Driscoll, 26 R.I. 547, 550, 59 A. 923, 925 (1905), referred to the principle enunciated in Cox as the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.  Subsequently, in Kilgore v. Shepard Co., 52 R.I. 151, 154, 158 A. 720, 721 (1932), Nina M. Kilgore's effort to rely on the doctrine to recover damages for injuries sustained when a chair furnished by the defendant collapsed just as she was about to sit in it went for naught because, according to the court, at the time of the injury the chair was under her exclusive control rather than that of the party charged with neglect. In Goyette v. Sousa, 90 R.I. 8, 16-17, 153 A.2d 509, 514 (1959), the court defined exclusive control as a sufficiently complete domination over the instrumentality as to exclude the probability that any agent other than the particular defendant could have caused the injury. The court went on to say that the defendant's domination of the instrumentality must reasonably indicate that regardless of what happened the defendant knew the condition of the instrumentality and knew what went wrong.    It must appear from the evidence that no agent other than the defendant was in a position to participate in the act or omission which constituted the negligence. The Goyettes, a married couple, were seeking to recover damages for injuries sustained by Mrs. Goyette when her leg penetrated the rusted metal deck of a pontoon used as a mooring place by shellfishermen who would take their wares ashore and sell them to the defendant, who was a fish wholesaler. The court ruled that the Goyettes could not take advantage of the doctrine of exclusive control because the evidence did not show such a control which would exclude the likelihood that some other agent participated in the cause of the injury. Goyette v. Sousa, 90 R.I. at 17, 153 A.2d at 514. In the case at bar, the trial justice, in directing a verdict on Parrillo's res ipsa loquitur count, alluded to the definitional portion of Goyette and offered the following observation: The only thing the Court can conclude is that the grenadine bottle that exploded in the plaintiff's hands was in the custody and control of the Barnsider for at least several months.    I think that we can all imagine that any number of things could have happened to that bottle in transport and while in the possession of the Barnsider such as something falling on it, something hitting it at the neck or some other thing which could have caused weakness. This leads me to conclude that there has been an insufficient showing of exclusive control by the plaintiff here to justify the use of res ipsa loquitur and a charge to the jury on that point. We believe, for the reasons that follow, that the trial justice, by his reliance on Goyette, has placed an undue burden on Parrillo. Dean Prosser, after pointing out that a defendant's negligence does not have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, explains that, in dealing with the requirement of exclusive control, there is no necessity for a plaintiff to eliminate all other possible causes of the accident. All that is required is that the plaintiff produce sufficient evidence from which a reasonable man could say that, on the whole, it was more likely than not that there was negligence on the part of the defendant. Prosser refers to the Kilgore case as a perfect example of one of the instances in which a strict application of the exclusive-control requirement has led to ridiculous conclusions; and control, he said, if it is not to be pernicious and misleading, must be considered as a very flexible term. Prosser, Law of Torts § 39 at 218-224 (4th ed. 1971). Again, in 2 Harper and James, The Law of Torts § 19.7 (1956), the authors stressed that in order to show exclusive control, the possibility of other causes does not have to be eliminated completely, but their likelihood must be so reduced that the jury can reasonably find that the negligence, if any, lies at the defendant's door. Today, a myriad of cases exists which hold that there is nothing in the doctrine's rationale that (1) requires the defendant to have actual physical control at the time of the injury [8] or (2) requires a plaintiff to eliminate completely the possibility of other causes for the injuries sustained. [9] A decade ago a distinguished jurist, Edward W. Day, then Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, offered the following response to a manufacturer who claimed that a plaintiff could not rely upon res ipsa loquitur because the manufacturer had relinquished control of its product once it was sold to the wholesaler: If the defendant's argument were accepted, a consumer could never sue a manufacturer on a theory of res ipsa loquitur because the manufacturer never retains exclusive control over its product throughout the distributive process. Numerous courts have allowed consumers to sue a manufacturer on the theory of res ipsa loquitur for personal injuries suffered as a result of defects in products of which the consumer had physical possession at the time of injury where there was no indication that any other handler of the product before it reached the consumer had contributed to said injury.   In addition the plaintiffs may at trial offer proof to negative the possibility of any improper handling which might have altered the condition of the pills involved herein. [citations omitted] Oresman v. G.D. Searle & Co., 321 F. Supp. 449, 554-55 (D.R.I. 1971). In seeking to delineate the limits of the exclusive-control factor, Judge Day relied upon comment (g) to Restatement (Second) Torts § 328(D). The Chief Judge wrote prior to a time when this court, by its adoption of Rule 12, had agreed to render advisory opinions to the United States courts operating within the First Circuit. However, we do believe that Judge Day has blazed a trail that has been followed by others, specifically, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's holding in Gilbert v. Korvette's Inc., 457 Pa. 602, 327 A.2d 94 (1974), where the court adopted § 328(D) in its entirety. Past preoccupation with the exclusive-control requirement has caused this court to lose sight of the fact that exclusive control, like Chief Baron Pollock's reference to res ipsa loquitur, merely gives recognition to the fact that circumstantial evidence can afford an appropriate and adequate evidentiary foundation for recovery in a negligence action. The time has come that Rhode Island courts, when considering the exclusive-control factor, deemphasize the semantic and exercise the common sensical. It is our considered judgment that the evidentiary rule expressed in § 328(D) of the Restatement (Second) Torts (1965) supplies a far more logical and orderly approach to circumstantial proof of negligence than has been formerly employed in this jurisdiction. Section 328(D), entitled Res Ipsa Loquitur, provides: (1) It may be inferred that harm suffered by the plaintiff is caused by negligence of the defendant when (a) the event is of a kind which ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence; (b) other responsible causes, including the conduct of the plaintiff and third persons, are sufficiently eliminated by the evidence; and (c) the indicated negligence is within the scope of the defendant's duty to the plaintiff. (2) It is the function of the court to determine whether the inference may reasonably be drawn by the jury, or whether it must necessarily be drawn. (3) It is the function of the jury to determine whether the inference is to be drawn in any case where different conclusions may reasonably be reached. To the extent our prior decisions are inconsistent with § 328(D), they are no longer to be followed. The Restatement disavows the requirement of exclusive control. A party's negligence may be inferred when other responsible causes    are sufficiently eliminated by the evidence. Restatement (Second) Torts § 328(D)(1)(b) (1965). Exclusive control may eliminate other causes, but the critical inquiry is not control, but whether a particular defendant is the responsible cause of the injury. Restatement (Second) Torts § 328(D), comment g at 161 (1965). [10] Again, however, the plaintiff is not required to exclude all other possible conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt, and it is enough that he make out a case from which the jury may reasonably conclude that the negligence was, more probably than not, that of the defendant. Since we are concerned here with the grant of a motion for a directed verdict on the res ipsa count, we must view the evidence adduced up until the time of the motion in the light most favorable to Parrillo, drawing therefrom all the reasonable inferences that will support his claim, taking care neither to weigh the evidence nor to pass upon the credibility of the witnesses. DaVinci Creations, Inc. v. Nu-Frame Co., R.I., 418 A.2d 851 (1980); Carnevale v. Smith, R.I., 404 A.2d 836 (1979). The record indicates that both Parrillo and the waitress testified that the grenadine bottle exploded. It also discloses that Providence Beverage's trucks traveled to Giroux's New York plant where they picked up cardboard cases filled with grenadine bottles and returned the cargo to Rhode Island. Providence Beverage then delivered cardboard cartons containing grenadine bottles separated by individual pieces of cardboard to the Barnsider Restaurant where Providence Beverage employees unloaded the cases and took them into the kitchen's caged storage area. The grenadine bottles remained in this storage area in their cardboard cartons until Parrillo took the bottles out of the cartons and placed them in the closed cupboard at the rear of the bar as back up to be used when the bottle in use was empty. Parrillo had told the jury that in his fifteen years of tending to the thirst needs of the public, he had never experienced any prior problems with opening the bottles of grenadine, and the waitress who witnessed the mishap also reported that Parrillo did not accidentally hit or strike the grenadine bottle on the bar as he was attempting to open it. We are of the opinion that this evidence, viewed in its totality, if considered by the jury, presented an evidentiary basis upon which the jury could find that Parrillo's injuries resulted from the failure on the part of one of Giroux's employees to spot a defect in the bottle as the bottles [11] passed in review after a tour along an automated assembly line. We see no evidence that would support a verdict so far as Providence Beverage's negligence is concerned.