Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1918 — Watch for Tacks in Pie. [ARTICLE]

Watch for Tacks in Pie.

The question as -to whether a person who finds a black tack in a piece of blueberry pie is entitled to recover damages from a restaurant company for gross negligence in not detecting the presence of the tack in the pie, has been passed on by the supreme court of Massachusetts in Ask vs. Childs Dining Hall company, in which the court ruloid for the defendant and held that the plaintiff had failed to sustain the burden of proof in establishing either direct or inferential evidence of negligence. In pointing out the difficulties confronting the defendant in keeping small black tacks out of its blueberry pies, the court said: “The tack was very small. .It was so tiny that it readily might have become imbedded in a blueberry. If so, its color and shape were such that it would naturally escape the mosh careful scrutiny. It might as readily have stuck iijto a blueberry before it came s to the possession of the defendant aa afterward. The carelessness of some person for .whom the defendant in no way was responsible might have caused its presence in the pie, The maker of the basket, some previous owner of the berry, or some other third person, is as likely to have been the direct cause of the tack being in the pie as the defendant or those for whose conduct it is liable.”