PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge.
Appellant, Mrs. Marguerite Jamieson, bought from Woodward & Lothrop, a department store, an elastic exerciser manufactured by Helena Rubinstein, Inc., which she had seen advertised in a magazine. She bought by brand name, ‘Lithe-Line’, and no special instructions as to use were given her by the vendor's salesperson. While she was using the exerciser she suffered a sudden unconsciousness, and although she testified she did not know what happened it appears to be a reasonable inference that the exerciser slipped and struck her in the eye. She sued Woodward & Lothrop for breach of warranty and Helena Rubinstein, Inc., for negligence. The defendants answered. Appellant's deposition was taken, and in the course of it the exerciser in question and the printed instructions given with it were introduced as exhibits. The District Court, on the basis of the complaint, the answers, the deposition, and the exhibits, granted summary judgment for the defendants. This appeal followed.

The court is divided in its view of the judgment in favor of the manufacturer, Helena Rubinstein, Inc. A majority agree with the District Court, and so the judgment will be affirmed.

The theory of the plaintiff as to the manufacturer, as set forth in her complaint, was that the exerciser was inherently dangerous and that the manufacturer had failed to warn or otherwise protect her against such danger. In answer to an interrogation she said that when the solid rubber rope is subjected*25 **34 to stress, as in an exercise, great potential striking power is created; that the rope ‘can depart from the instep’ in the course of an exercise; and that no safety or protective device was provided and no warning given.

The exerciser in question was an ordinary rubber rope, about the thickness of a large lead pencil, about forty inches long, with loops on the ends. It had no imperfections or defects whatsoever and no added gadgets. It never broke or went awry. It was a simple elastic exerciser. With the rope came a set of ‘Instructions'. These consisted of a series of eight silhouette sketches of exercises to be done with the rope, with a summary description of each exercise. There were no instructions as to how to operate the device; there was no device to operate, the article in question being merely a rubber rope. In appearance it resembled a child's skipping rope.

In the course of her program Mrs. Jamieson began one of the most normal and natural of exercises. She lay down on the floor, put the rope under her feet, held on to the handles, and, with knees stiff, raised her feet straight up, intending then to lower them and so, alternately raising and lowering them, to give her body muscles a workout. Apparently the rope slipped off the soles of her feet and hit her in the eye. She suffered a serious injury.

[1] The unfortunate event was an accident, we think,- an event so natural that responsibility for it is by common consent not ascribed to fault. Of course one is truly sorry for the unfortunate victim of a chance accident, but the premise of pecuniary liability for tort is not the fact of injury but is negligence. #p#分页标题#e#

There are on the market vast numbers of products as to which the law holds the manufacturer to a duty to warn of foreseeable dangers or to provide safeguards against such dangers. But there are also on the market vast *26 **35 numbers of potentially dangerous products as to which the manufacturer owes no duty of warning or other protection. The law does not require that an article be accident-proof or incapable of doing harm. It would be totally unreasonable to require that a manufacturer warn or protect against every injury which may ensue from mishap in the use of his product. Almost every physical object can be inherently dangerous or potentially dangerous in a sense. A lead pencil can stab a man to the heart or puncture his jugular vein, and due to that potentiality it is an ‘inherently dangerous' object; but, if a person accidentally slips and falls on a pencil-point in his pocket, the manufacturer of the pencil is not liable for the injury. He has no obligation to put a safety guard on a lead pencil or to issue a warning with its sale. A tack, a hammer, a pane of glass, a chair, a rug, a rubber band, and myriads of other objects are truly ‘inherently dangerous', because they might slip. They cause accidents and injury even more often, we expect, than do rubber exercisers. But the doctrines fashioned by the law for inherently dangerous objects do not encompass these things. A hammer is not of defective design because it may hurt the user if it slips. A manufacturer cannot manufacture a knife that will not cut or a hammer what will not mash a thumb or a stove that will not burn a finger. The law does not require him to warn of such common dangers. On the other end of the spectrum of practicalities, a manufacturer should not be permitted to market without protection to the user a spray which would kill trees if used at the wrong time, as in McClanahan,FN7 or a skirt which would otherwise ignite if brushed by a lighted cigarette, as in Noone.FN8 A manufacturer might be liable for failure to provide a shield or an emphatic warning to users of an electric power saw, but he would not be liable if he failed so to provide in respect to a kitchen knife.

If a hand slips in a normal operation with a non-defective device, a knife will cut and a lighted stove will burn and an automobile will crash into a tree; but no authority holds that manufacturers must warn of such contingencies. All this is firmly established commercial law and custom. We doubt that any book of instructions given with a car warns that, if a user accidentally steps on the accelerator instead of on the brake, he may be hurt; nevertheless, so far as we are able to ascertain, no case has yet held the manufacturer liable under such circumstances.

Neither an exact definition of liabilities nor a precise delineation of the boundaries is necessary in the present case. It seems clear under all or any of the cases or text authorities that, where a manufactured article is a simple thing of universally known characteristics, not a device with parts or mechanism, the only danger being not latent but obvious to any possible user, if the article does not break or go awry, but injury occurs through a mishap in normal use, the article reacting in its normal and foreseeable manner, the manufacturer is not liable for negligence. If a man drops an iron dumbbell on his foot the manufacturer is not liable. #p#分页标题#e#

The case at bar falls within the category just described.FN19 The only ‘dangerous condition’ was that a rubber rope is elastic and when stretched will, when released, return to its original length with soem degree of force. Small boys know that fact and fashion slingshots upon the principle. Surely every adult knows that, if an elastic band, whether it be an office rubber band or a rubber rope exerciser, is stretched and one's hold on it slips, the elastic snaps back. There was no duty on the manufacturer to warn of that simple fact.

The ‘Instructions' given with this rope were simply an illustrated text depicting various exercises which might be performed with it. They were affirmative. No mechanism was involved. There were no instructions as to how to operate the device; there was no ‘operation’ of a ‘device’; the only action was to stretch the rope and then relax the tension. The instructions showed in silhouette eight exercises to be done with the rope. They were the time-honored routine known to every high school gym class, a modern rendition of the old-time ‘Daily Dozen’. *29 **38 The one Mrs. Jamieson was doing was described thus:

‘Tummy Flattener

‘Lie on back. Place hands in loops of Lithe-Line. Place feet in middle; pull legs up and lower to ground.'

While she was executing this simple maneuver the rope slipped off her feet. The ‘instructions' did not say that, if the rope, while stretched, slipped out of her hand or off her foot, it might hit her in the eyes, the nose, the mouth, or the ear, thereby possibly causing a detached retina, a chipped septum, a split lip which might become fatally infected, or a ruptured eardrum resulting in permanent deafness. But we are of clear opinion that the manufacturer cannot be held negligent for failing to give such instructions.

The reasonably foreseeable injury from a mishap with this rope was not great-a cut lip, bloody nose, or black eye, at the most. This lady's injury, a detachment of the retina in one eye, is not the sort of thing reasonably anticipated from the snapback of a rubber elastic of this sort. At the same time it is obvious that any injury to an eye may have dire consequences. So may a cut finger or a broken wrist. But we do not find in the authorities a doctrine that, if the injury ordinarily foreseen is relatively minor and so need not be warned against, a manufacturer must nevertheless warn against any dire unusual consequence which, also obviously, may ensue. Quite to the contrary it is well established that a manufacturer is not liable, unless serious bodily harm is reasonably foreseeable.FN20 Of course, so far as foreseeability is concerned, not only may the usual be foreseen, but the unusual may often be foreseen as a remote possibility. A manufacturer may foresee as a remote possibility that a metal decoration on a jewelry box may scratch one and cause an infection;FN21 the heel of a lady's shoe may break at an inopportune moment, causing serious injury;FN22 or that a stickpin may stab a man to the heart. Yet for these remote eventualities the law imposes no liability on the manufacturer. ‘Reasonably foreseeable’ in the rule here applicable does not encompass the far reaches of pessimistic imagination. #p#分页标题#e#

Since the rope in the case at bar was without defect or accessory gadgets and did not break or fail in any manner, no fault, and surely no negligence, can be ascribed to the manufacturer merely because it slipped off the lady's foot while in perfectly normal use. It would be erroneous to hold that the manufacturer may be liable for damages if he fails to warn users that a rope such as this might slip off a foot or out of a hand. When all the discussion of involved legal principles has been concluded, the case remains as simple as it was in the beginning: A lady was doing a simple exercise with a simple rubber rope, and it slipped off her foot and hit her in the eye. That is the whole of it. And the question is equally simple: Was the manufacturer therefore negligent? We think it was not. To hold otherwise would go beyond any reasonable dictates of justice in fixing the liabilities of manufacturers of products sold on the market.

Affirmed.