Caseflicks

Supreme Court of Minnesota • 1889

Osborne v. McMasters

40 Minn. 103 | 41 N.W. 543 | 1889 Minn. LEXIS 33

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, a protective statute can define the duty in a common-law negligence claim, and an employer can answer for an employee’s breach of that duty.

Background

A clerk in the defendant’s drugstore sold a deadly poison to the plaintiff’s intestate without the label “Poison,” as required by law. Unaware of its danger, she ingested it and died. The defendant challenged civil liability for the sale, and the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the judgment below.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether violating a poison-labeling law can establish negligence in a civil action even though the law does not expressly create a right to sue.

Holding

Yes. Breaching a statutory duty designed to prevent this kind of injury is negligence per se, and a person proximately injured by the breach may bring a common-law negligence action.

Reasoning

A law that imposes a specific duty to protect others supplies a standard of care. The poison-labeling requirement was designed to protect the public from the danger of poison; the death alleged here was the kind of harm it sought to prevent.

The action remained a common-law negligence claim, not a claim created by the statute. Common law permits recovery for injuries proximately caused by another’s breach of a legal duty, whether that duty comes from common law or a protective statute.

Because the statute fixed the duty to label the poison, its violation established negligence rather than merely providing evidence from which negligence might be inferred. The clerk’s unlabeled sale and the buyer’s resulting death supplied the alleged breach and injury.

Issue #2

Whether the drugstore owner can be civilly liable for the clerk’s statutory negligence when only the clerk is subject to criminal liability.

Holding

Yes. An employer is civilly liable for a clerk’s negligence committed in the course of employment, whether the breached duty comes from statute or common law.

Reasoning

The ordinary rule of agency makes an employer responsible for a servant’s negligence committed in the course of employment and causing injury to a third person. The clerk sold the poison while working in the defendant’s drugstore.

The fact that a statute established the clerk’s duty did not change that rule. Nor did the clerk’s individual exposure to criminal liability limit the owner’s civil liability for the clerk’s negligence.