TACKS IN PIE.

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 38, 15 February 1919, Page 10

TACKS IN PIE.

The question as to whether a person who finds a black tack in a pieco of blueberry pie is entitled' to recover damages from a restaurant company for gross negligence in not- detecting the presence of the tack is the pie, has been passed on by the Supreme Court of Massaohusett* in Ask v. Child* Dining Hall Company, in which the Court ruled for the defendant, and held that the plaintiff had failed to sustain the burden of proof in establiahing 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 havo become imbedded in a blueberry. If go, it* colour and shape were such that it would naturally escape the most careful scrutiny. It might as readily have stuck into a blueberry before it came to the possession of the defendant as 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 «f the basket, sOme previous owner of the berry, or some other third person, is as likely to have been the direct <»"»• of the tack being in the pi« as the defendant,or those for whose conduct it is liable."