The Adulteration Bill

Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

This Act may be cited as the Adulteration Act, 18...

“Person” includes a company, “Court of competent jurisdiction” shall be read and have effect as if the debt or demand in respect of which the expression is used were a simple contract debt, and not a debt or demand created by statute.

The vendor of every commodity shall be deemed to warrant the same to be unadulterated, unless he proves that he informed the person purchasing the same at the time of the delivery thereof to him that it was adulterated; or that the commodity was expressly purchased as the manufacture, composition, or mixture of some other person than the vendor thereof, and that the said commodity was at the time of the delivery thereof to the purchaser in the same condition as when it was received by the vendor from such other person.

If any person knowingly, and without giving the information by this Act required, sells to any other person any adulterated commodity, the purchaser thereof may recover from the vendor thereof in any court of competent jurisdiction the sum paid therefor, and also any commodity he shall have given therefor by way of barter or exchange, and the vendor shall not be entitled to claim a return of the adulterated commodity, nor the price thereof.

The proof that any commodity sold is an adulterated commodity shall be Primâ facie evidence that it was an adulterated commodity to the knowledge of the vendor at the time he sold the same; and if sale and delivery were not at the same time, then also at the time he delivered the same.

Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to protect any person from being proceeded against by way of indictment in respect of the sale of any adulterated commodity, or shall relieve any person in respect of any such sale from any penal consequence to which he would have been liable if this Act had not been passed, or shall prevent the purchaser of any adulterated commodity who by the use thereof sustains any injury to his health, whether temporary or permanent, from recovering from the vendor thereof damages for such injury, in addition to any moneys or commodity he may recover under the preceding provisions of this Act.