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50 Minn. L. Rev. 791 (1965-1966)
The Fall of the Citadel (Strict Liability to the Consumer)

handle is hein.journals/mnlr50 and id is 807 raw text is: The Fall of the Citadel (Strict Liability to the Consumer) Continuing his study of the law of products liability, the author details the recent explosion in the field. William L. Prosser* The fall of a citadel is a dramatic moment. The stronghold has long been invested; the siege has endured for months. Parallels have been dug and gun emplacements mounted; and a grim can- nonade has made breaches in the great wall, behind which the defenders have erected demilunes, so that the struggle goes on. There is a final heavy bombardment; the assault goes forward against the main breach, and the storming party ascends over the corpses of the slain. There is a desperate hour of hand-to-hand combat, and then the moment when the defense falters. The line wavers; the break becomes a retreat, the retreat a rout. The rest is the story of sack and slaughter, of riot, rape and rapine, that has added an evil luster to the names of Magdeburg and Badajoz, along with ancient Troy. In the field of products liability, the date of the fall of the cita- del of privity can be fixed with some certainty. It was May 9, 1960, when the Supreme Court of New Jersey announced the de- cision in Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. The leaguer had been an epic one of more than fifty years. The sister fortress of negligence liability had fallen, after an equally prolonged de- fense, in 1916 Much sapping and mining had finally carried a whole south wing of the strict liability citadel, involving food and drink; and further inroads had been made into an adjoining area of products for what might be called intimate bodily use, such as hair dye and cosmetics Heavy artillery had made no less *Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of Law. 1. 82 NJ. 358, 161 A.2d 69 (1960). 2. See generally Prosser, The Assault Upon the Citadel, 69 YALE LJ. 1099 (1960). 3. E.g., Graham v. Bottenfield's, Inc., 176 Kan. 68, 269 P.2d 413 (1965) (hair dye); Rogers v. Toni Home Permanent Co., 167 Ohio St. 244, 147 N.E.2d 612 (1958) (permanent wave -solution).

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