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433 Pa. 558

Commonwealth v. Feinberg

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided April 23, 1969

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1969-04-23

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“It is clear that appellant knew that the skid-row alcoholics to whom he dispensed Sterno would extract the alcohol for drinking purposes. As the majority correctly points out, our decision and the decisions below did not impose `a duty on all sellers of Sterno to determine how their customers will use the product. The Court was merely saying that if a seller of Sterno is aware that the purchaser is an alcoholic and will use Sterno as a source of alcohol, then the seller is grossly negligent and wantonly reckless in selling Sterno to him.'”

quoted by 1 later decision, including United States of America Ex Rel. Max Feinberg, H-7586 v. Alfred T. Rundle, Superintendent, State Correctional Institution at Graterford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1969-04-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently November 2014 · most notably Commonwealth v. Rawles (1983), State v. Marti (1980)

6 federal appellate · 35 state decisions

250196919701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Concurring Opinion by

Mr. Justice Roberts :

¶2Although I join in the opinion of the Court, I believe it is necessary to emphasize the controlling considerations which support the Court’s holding that this case is an appropriate one for criminal sanctions. There can be little question that the record before us not only supports the findings of the court below but leads to the almost unalterable conclusion that appellant knew (or should have known) of the toxic nature of the product he was selling and knew of the exact use to which the Sterno would be put. Appellant was dealing with a product which when taken internally *574clearly was a dangerous instrumentality. By selling it to the persons to whom he sold it, knowing that they would use it in a way that was certain to cause serious harm to themselves, appellant exhibited the indifference to and reckless disregard for human life that is the classic element of the involuntary manslaughter offense. No causation problem is presented by the allegedly “intervening” acts of the victims, since those acts are exactly what appellant knew would take place when he sold the Sterno to these customers.

¶3In my view, it is crucial that this record presents no question whether appellant investigated — or was obligated to investigate — the use to which his customers would put the product. It is clear that appellant knew that the skid-row alcoholics to whom he dispensed the Sterno would extract the alcohol for drinking purposes. As the majority correctly points out, our decision and the decisions below did not impose “a duty on all sellers of Sterno to determine how their customers will use the product. The Court was merely saying that if a seller of Sterno is aware that the purchaser is an alcoholic and will use Sterno as a source of alcohol, then the seller is grossly negligent and wantonly reckless in selling Sterno to him.”

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