MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.

Facts

Buick Motor Company made automobiles. It sold one to a retail dealer, and the dealer resold it to Donald C. MacPherson. While MacPherson was in the car, it suddenly collapsed, and he was thrown out and injured. One of the wheels was made of defective wood, and its spokes crumbled into fragments. Buick had not made the wheel; it bought the wheel from another manufacturer. There was evidence that reasonable inspection could have found the defect and that Buick omitted the inspection. No one claimed that Buick knew of the defect and hid it, so the charge was negligence, not fraud. The car was designed to go fifty miles an hour and had seats for three persons. The dissent adds facts from the record: the wheel maker had supplied Buick with eighty thousand wheels, none found defective before this accident; Buick made no tests of its own; and the car was moving at only eight miles an hour. The trial judge told the jury that “an automobile is not an inherently dangerous vehicle.” The judge left it to the jury to decide whether Buick ought to have foreseen that the car, if negligently built, would become imminently dangerous.

Issues

1. Did Buick, which sold the car to a dealer, owe a duty of care and vigilance to anyone but its immediate purchaser, so that the dealer's customer could sue it for negligence?
2. Was Buick freed from a duty to inspect the wheel because it bought the wheels from a reputable manufacturer?

Holding

Buick owed MacPherson a duty of care irrespective of contract. A car with defective wheels gives warning of probable danger, and Buick knew that persons other than the dealer would use it. As maker of the finished product, Buick was not freed from a duty to inspect because it bought the wheels from a reputable manufacturer.