Traditionally, the tale of the plug of tobacco has been law students’ favorite anecdote explaining the term “res ipsa loquitur,” or “the thing speaks for itself.” I have reprinted the story or a link many times, but not yet in 2026, so here you are…
“It seems that appellant [Mr. Pillars] consumed one plug of his purchase, which measured up to representations, that it was tobacco unmixed with human flesh, but when appellant tackled the second plug it made him sick, but, not suspecting the tobacco, he tried another chew, and still another, until he bit into some foreign substance, which crumbled like dry bread, and caused him to foam at the mouth, while he was getting “sicker and sicker.” Finally, his teeth struck something hard; he could not bite through it. After an examination he discovered a human toe, with flesh and nail intact. We refrain from detailing the further harrowing and nauseating details. The appellant consulted a physician, who testified that appellant exhibited all of the characteristic symptoms of ptomaine poison. The physician examined the toe and identified it as a human toe in a state of putrefaction, and said, in effect, that his condition was caused by the poison generated by the rotten toe.[emphasis added]…Generally speaking, the rule is that the manufacturer is not liable to the ultimate consumer for damages resulting from the defects and impurities of the manufactured article…[but the Court can] “imagine no reason why, with ordinary care human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Agreed. The case is Pillars v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al., 78 So. 365 (Ms. 1918).
Similarly, 21-year-old woman Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas is dead because the idiot staff at a bungee-jumping event threw her from a bridge but forgot to attach the cord, leading to the poor woman plunging about 130 feet into a ravine. Maria was pronounced dead at the scene. The incident occurred on the “Skeleton Bridge” in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo.
Six people have been taken into custody. Good.
You know, hiring the equivalents of Moe, Larry and Curly to supervise bungee jumping is even more irresponsible than letting the Three Stooges be plumbers, carpenters or surgeons, which were among the set-ups for many of their slapstick film misadventures. Neither their employers nor the negligent homicide perps themselves can fall back on any rationalizations on the list and get away with it. #19. The Perfection Diversion, or “Nobody’s Perfect!” and “Everybody makes mistakes!” or #20. The “Just one mistake!” Fantasy are probably their best shots, but the problem is that literally nobody does this, ever, unless they are menaces to society who need to be locked away for the greater good. Tossing a trusting thrill-seeker off a cliff and neglecting to fasten the cord expected to safe her life is signature significance for a reckless moron. I guess #20A, “Everyone Deserves a Second Chance,” is also worth a try, but I would require such a bungee jumping establishment to prominently display a sign that says:
“Warning! Occasionally our staff neglects to attach the cord, which will result in a jumper having their brains splattered all over the ravine floor.”
I hate blaming victims, but I feel compelled to add that those of us who deliberately engage in activities that have no societal utility whatsoever and that innately involve the risk of death or serious bodily injury are limited in the amount of sympathy they can expect from me when their metaphorical tossing of the dice comes up snake-eyes. There are several posts on EA about the topic, as with people who pay absurd amount of money to climb Mount Everest or who go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Those who feel something as pointless as bungee jumping will enrich their lives and signify a purpose to an otherwise empty existence have their priorities seriously out of order. They don’t deserve to die, but they do deserve to have St. Peter say, when they knock on the Pearly Gate, “You died how? What were you thinking?”
Ethics Alarms 
Saw the headline in the Daily Mail. Couldn’t bring myself to read it. I have to admit I immediately defaulted to “Who goes bungee jumping?”
I take a positive attitude to thrill seeking. This are the type of people who are willing to risk their lives to enlist at the ships of discoverers like Columbus, Magellan, Abel Tasman, Willem Barentsz; who sailed with the Shackleton expedition to reach the South Pole; and are willing to put all on the line to explore space or the deep sea.
Let’s not forget those who more than fifty thousand years ago took to the sea and discovered far away archipelagoes. Or those who left Africa sixty thousand years crossing the deserts, and colonized Europe and Asia.
Without the thrill seeking impulse, and the willingness to defy death to achieve experience, knowledge, and glory human history would look different. Without this impulse mankind may still be in the stone age.
slight legal quibble: res ipsa loquitur allows proof of negligence by circumstantial evidence.
here we have the direct evidence
-Jut
Ya think? We don’t see how the cord became unfastened or who was responsible for attaching it, just as the court couldn’t say how the toe got in the tobacco. The principle is the same: if a bungee jumper falls to her death with no cord attached, someone has been very careless, because there is literally no way this could happen unless someone was negligent.
I don’t even remember the last time I saw such a high level of group stupidity. Were they all on drugs? Was it deliberate? Was this a murder or assisted suicide that they were going to record on video and claim it was an accident? Was a supervillain testing out a mind-altering weapon in the area?
Normally you’d have a checklist to make sure everything was safe. How did multiple people miss the “fasten the bright orange cord” step, including the bungee-jumper herself and the people holding the cameras? Did they fasten it and it just fell off and nobody noticed? (If it had been fastened to the jumper but not to the jump point, that would have been slightly more understandable.) I think it’s entirely fair in this case to blame the victim for not doing her own due diligence and making sure the staff were taking every safety precaution; that’s a Darwin Award shoo-in, albeit as a team effort.
How many different precautions, from protocol to training to common sense, had to fail here simultaneously to make this possible? Or did they not have any of that and just decide, “Hey, we’ve got this bungee cord here. Let’s start a bungee-jumping side hustle!” How did this happen, and how do we stop it from happening to anyone else (and not just in bungee-jumping, either)?
There were a lot of accusations on X of it being faked. She does seem very stiff when they are carrying her and the video doesn’t show her walking over to the edge, just the men lifting her. This seems unlikely, though, since apparently there was a body. I’ve seen video of this shot from at least three different angles. Everyone was looking at their phone and no one was looking at the woman.
An unverified report of the story on X says she was wearing a Go Pro camera which has disappeared.
This incident reminds me of a friend’s 34-year-old manchild, who has been fired from four jobs in four years.
Firing 1: Working as a sales clerk in a world-class amusement park’s gift shop, he took a short break to urinate in a potted plant just outside the store.
Firing 2: Rehired at the same amusement park by the same manager who had fired him but now wanted to give him a second chance, he was assigned to pilot a small replica of a steamboat from the amusement park’s “mainland” to one of its “islands.” With passengers aboard, he ran the craft aground.
Firing 3: Hired as rooms manager at a national mid-level hotel chain, he gave a man–who was not a guest at the hotel, with no questions asked–the key to a woman guest’s room just because the man wanted it.
Firing 4: Hired by a different national mid-level hotel chain to handle reservations, he double-booked a number of rooms for dates when the hotel was scheduled to host a large conference.
His mother says his problem is that he’s “a people pleaser.”
I hope he can control his demons before somebody gets hurt or killed.
Please tell us he hasn’t just taken a promising new job with a bungee jumping outfit….
He has just been hired to drive a van for Amazon. Vehicular manslaughter?
i agree with Cees … thrill seekers have an important role in human survival and prosperity. I am not a thrill seeker, more of an adventurer, and have carefully done things like parasailing and zip lining, but my favorite adventure was climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge. Not all that adventurous because you are strapped in, climbing stairs, not girders. But it forces you to come to terms with fear. Wouldn’t bungee jump, though, as I cannot imagine my old spine loving that.