## Facts

- Eighteen separate accidents nationwide injured children who detonated commercial blasting caps, generally between 1955 and 1965; parents sought consequential damages.
- Plaintiffs sued multiple blasting-cap manufacturers and the Institute of Makers of Explosives (I.M.E.), a trade association alleged to include virtually the entire U.S. blasting-cap industry.
- Plaintiffs alleged industry-wide practices created an unreasonable risk of harm, including failure to place warnings on individual caps and failure to adopt feasible safety measures despite knowledge of recurring child injuries.
- Plaintiffs alleged the manufacturers, acting through I.M.E., collected national accident information, considered warnings, rejected them, and opposed legislation requiring warning labels.
- In many incidents, detonation destroyed identifying features, making it impossible to identify the manufacturer of the specific cap causing the injury (particularly in the consolidated “Chance” cases).
- The cases were consolidated in federal court under diversity jurisdiction; defendants moved to dismiss (and related dispositive relief) at the pleading/early proof stage.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs stated cognizable claims (including negligence and strict products liability) based on alleged industry-wide failure to warn and related safety omissions.
2. Whether manufacturers and a trade association comprising nearly the whole industry may be treated as a joint enterprise/joint tortfeasors for injuries caused by blasting caps.
3. Whether, when the specific manufacturer cannot be identified, the burden may shift to defendants to show they did not cause or contribute to the harm once plaintiffs make a threshold showing of industry-wide practices and inclusion of the responsible manufacturer within the defendant group.
4. Whether the consolidated, multistate accidents could be litigated using generally shared tort principles without individualized, plaintiff-by-plaintiff choice-of-law determinations at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

## Decision

- The court denied, in substantial part, defendants’ motions to dismiss, permitting plaintiffs to proceed past the pleading stage.
- The court held that certain circumstances can justify enterprise (industry-wide) liability for harm caused by an industry’s collectively maintained practices.
- The court allowed negligence and strict-liability theories to go forward based on allegations of a common failure to warn and other shared safety omissions.
- The court indicated that causation problems created by an unknown specific manufacturer could, depending on proof, be addressed by treating the industry as a unit and shifting some proof burdens to defendants.
- The court emphasized the preliminary nature of the ruling and that plaintiffs still had to prove enterprise conditions, causation, and other elements through factual development.

## Legal Principles

- A complaint may state a claim against multiple manufacturers and a trade association on an enterprise-liability theory where plaintiffs plausibly allege industry-wide practices or standards that created the risk that resulted in injury.
- In products cases involving inherently dangerous items, foreseeable injury to children can support a duty-to-warn theory, and the absence of warnings and feasible safety measures may support negligence and product-defect allegations.
- When the product’s identification is practically unavailable and defendants collectively controlled or maintained the risk through coordinated practices, a court may consider approaches analogous to concerted action, joint enterprise, or alternative liability to address causation at later stages.
- For consolidated, multistate tort claims tied to asserted national industry practices, generally shared state-law tort principles may be applied at the pleading stage, with refinements reserved for later proceedings.

## Conclusion

The court permitted consolidated blasting-cap claims to proceed against an industry group and its trade association on an enterprise-liability theory, allowing litigation to continue even where plaintiffs could not identify the specific manufacturer, subject to later proof of coordinated industry practices, duty, and causation.


Hall v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 345 F. Supp. 353 (E.D.N.Y. 1972)