## Facts

- Defendants manufactured a balance wheel for a circular saw that was defectively cast, including a large hole in the rim.
- Defendants attempted to conceal and compensate for the defect by boring through the rim and filling the hole with lead, further weakening the wheel.
- Defendants sold the wheel (already made and on hand) to a purchaser who was informed of and understood the defect.
- The purchaser used the saw for about five years without incident.
- The saw later came into the possession of Jeremiah Loop, who used it for his own purposes.
- While Loop was using the saw, the wheel burst and a fragment struck him, causing fatal injuries.
- Loop’s administrators sued the manufacturers for negligent manufacture causing death.

## Issues

1. Whether a manufacturer owes a tort duty to a remote user lacking privity of contract for injuries from a defective product when the defect was disclosed to the immediate purchaser.
2. Whether a defective balance wheel for a saw is an article “in its nature” or “imminently” dangerous to human life, permitting liability to third parties notwithstanding lack of privity.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed judgment for the defendants.
- The court held the manufacturers were not liable to the deceased’s representatives because there was no privity between the manufacturers and the deceased.
- The court concluded the balance wheel was not inherently or imminently dangerous to human life, so the limited exception permitting recovery without privity did not apply.

## Legal Principles

- A manufacturer’s negligence in making an ordinary article generally does not create liability to persons not in privity with the manufacturer.
- Liability to remote users without privity may arise only where the article is inherently or imminently dangerous such that injury to third persons is a natural and expected consequence of the negligence.
- Disclosure of the defect to the immediate purchaser and extended safe use tend to support the conclusion that the product is not of the inherently dangerous class that triggers third-party tort liability.

## Conclusion

The court denied recovery because the defective balance wheel was treated as an ordinary article rather than inherently or imminently dangerous, and absent that category of danger the lack of contractual privity barred a negligence claim by a remote user.


Loop v. Litchfield, 42 N.Y. 351 (N.Y. 1870)