## Facts

- A clerk employed at McMasters’s drug store sold Osborne’s intestate a deadly poison in the course of employment.
- Minnesota law required poisons to be labeled “Poison,” but the bottle was not so labeled.
- The decedent, unaware of the substance’s dangerous nature, ingested it.
- The ingestion caused the decedent’s death.
- Osborne, as representative of the decedent, sued McMasters in a common-law negligence action premised on the statutory violation.

## Issues

1. Whether violation of a statute imposing a specific public-safety duty (labeling poisons) constitutes negligence when the violation proximately causes the type of harm the statute was designed to prevent.
2. Whether civil liability may be imposed in a common-law negligence action even if the statute does not expressly create a private right of action.
3. Whether an employer is liable for a clerk’s statutory violation committed within the scope of employment.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for Osborne.
- The court held that breach of a statutory duty enacted for the protection or benefit of others constitutes negligence when it proximately causes the kind of injury the statute was designed to prevent.
- The court rejected the argument that civil liability required an express statutory civil remedy or a preexisting identical common-law duty.
- McMasters was liable for the clerk’s unlabeled sale because it occurred in the course of employment and caused the protected harm.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence is the breach of a legal duty; the duty may arise from common law or from a statute designed to protect others.
- When a statute imposes a specific duty for public protection, failure to comply is negligence as to persons the statute aims to protect who suffer injuries of the type the statute aims to prevent.
- A statutory violation supports liability in a common-law negligence action without the statute expressly creating a civil cause of action, so long as proximate causation is shown.
- An employer may be held liable for an employee’s negligent acts, including statutory breaches, committed within the scope of employment.

## Conclusion

The court held that selling a deadly poison without the statutorily required “Poison” label was a breach of legal duty constituting negligence, and because that breach proximately caused the decedent’s death—the very harm the statute sought to prevent—the defendant was civilly liable and the plaintiff’s judgment was affirmed.


Osborne v. McMasters, 40 Minn. 103, 41 N.W. 543 (Minn. 1889)