Court Opinion

ID: 9569298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:12:30.211525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:53:06.697050
License: Public Domain

*528Pope, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
Plaintiffs’ nine-year-old son, Mario, discovered some rat poison pellets in a container behind a counter at a Boys Club and thought they were candy. The poison, an anticoagulant that kills by thinning the blood and breaking down the walls of the blood vessels, was slow acting by design. Mario showed no symptoms until four days later, when his nose began to bleed. After several more days, Mario’s condition continued to worsen and he was put in the hospital for blood transfusions. By the time the doctors discovered that Mario had ingested rat poison, it was too late for the antidote to work.
Although it was foreseeable that the rat poison would be consumed by children who mistook it for candy, ICI failed to add an emetic or an aversive agent to the product. Plaintiffs produced expert testimony that an emetic will cause any human who ingests the poison to immediately vomit, thereby expelling the poison, but will not have the same effect on rats because they do not have a vomit reflex. They also submitted expert evidence that the aversive agent Bitrex would make the poison taste bad to children but would not keep rats from eating it; that Bitrex was in use in a variety of products as early as the late 1970s; and that there was no reason ICI could not have begun testing its use in rat poison at that time. Viewing this evidence in a light most favorable to plaintiffs (this appeal is from a jury verdict for plaintiffs), a jury could find that ICI’s failure to add an emetic or aversive agent was unreasonable.
The majority nonetheless holds that ICI cannot be liable because its product had an adequate warning label, citing Center Chemical Co. v. Parzini, 234 Ga. 868, 870 (218 SE2d 580) (1975) for the proposition that a product need not be perfectly safe as long as it is packaged with an adequate warning label. However, there was no evidence in Center Chemical that the product in question could have reasonably been made safer. In this case, on the other hand, a jury could (and did) find that the product could have been made safer, without losing its effectiveness, if defendant had taken reasonable steps to do so. Center Chemical holds that a manufacturer should not be liable for producing a necessarily dangerous but useful product as long as the product is packaged with an adequate warning label; it does not hold that a manufacturer who can take reasonable steps to make its dangerous product safer can avoid liability by instead placing a warning label on its package. Thus, while I agree that plaintiff’s inadequate labeling claim is pre-empted,1 I would hold that ICI’s di*529rected verdict motion was properly denied with respect to plaintiffs’ claims based on design defect and negligence.
Decided December 3, 1993
Reconsideration denied December 20, 1993
Rogers & Hardin, Phillip S. McKinney, Susan D. Burnell, Schweber, Izenson & Anderson, Barry L. Anderson, Hagler, Hyles & Adams, M. Stephen Hyles, for appellant.
Richard A. Childs, Webb, Carlock, Copeland, Semler & Stair, Wade K Copeland, Kelly, Denney, Pease & Allison, Ray L. Allison, Doffermyre, Shields, Canfield & Knowles, Robert E. Shields, for appellees.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge McMurray, Judge Cooper and Judge Blackburn join in this dissent.

 Based on the portion of FIFRA quoted by the majority, at least four federal circuits have ruled that where a defendant’s label has been approved by the EPA, the federal agency charged with responsibility for administering FIFRA, state law tort claims alleging inadequate labeling are pre-empted because they require the plaintiff to show that the defendant *529failed to meet a standard “in addition to or different from” FIFRA requirements. See King v. E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., 996 F2d 1346 (1st Cir. 1993); Shaw v. Dow Brands, 994 F2d 364 (7th Cir. 1993); Papas v. Upjohn Co., 985 F2d 516 (11th Cir. 1993); Arkansas-Platte &c. v. Van Waters &c., 959 F2d 158 (10th Cir. 1992), adhered to at 981 F2d 1177 (10th Cir. 1993) upon reconsideration in light of Cipollone v. Liggett Group, 505 U. S._(112 SC 2608, 120 LE2d 407) (1992). Accord Hopkins v. CIBA-Geigy Corp., 432 SE2d 142 (N. C. Ct. App. 1993). Moreover, our Supreme Court has held that almost identical language in another statute clearly and expressly pre-empted state law tort claims based on the inadequacy of warning labels on tampons. See Poloney v. Tambrands, Inc., 260 Ga. 850 (412 SE2d 526) (1991).