Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Fresno

Gladys Escola, a waitress, was placing bottles of Coca-Cola into a refrigerator at a restaurant when one of the bottles exploded in her hand, causing serious lacerations. The bottle had been delivered by the defendant bottling company several days earlier and had not been subjected to unusual treatment. There was no direct evidence of what caused the bottle to explode.

The majority reasoned that the res ipsa doctrine applied because bottles do not spontaneously explode under normal conditions, and the defendant had exclusive control over the manufacturing and bottling process. Justice Traynor's concurrence went further, arguing that public policy demands that manufacturers bear the cost of injuries from defective products because they are in the best position to prevent defects, they profit from putting products into the stream of commerce, and they can spread the cost through insurance and pricing. Traynor argued that requiring plaintiffs to prove negligence placed an unfair burden on injured consumers.

Justice Traynor's Escola concurrence is one of the most influential judicial opinions in American tort law history. It laid the intellectual groundwork for the strict products liability revolution that came with Greenman v. Yuba Power Products in 1963 and was later codified in Section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. The concurrence's arguments about risk spreading, loss distribution, and consumer protection became the standard policy justifications for strict products liability.