Baba Basra 5:8-9

Baba Basra 5:8

If one person sells wine or oil to another and the price goes up or down, if the price changed before the order has been measured out, the seller has the option to cancel the sale. If the order had already been measured out, the buyer has the option to cancel. If there was a middleman dealing between the buyer and seller and the produce barrel broke, it’s the middleman’s loss. One who sells wine or oil must let an extra three drops drip into the customer’s vessel. If the seller turns his container and drains it, the liquid that gathers belongs to the seller. A shopkeeper is not required to let three extra drops drip. Rabbi Yehuda says that a shopkeeper is only exempt from the extra drops on a Friday afternoon as it’s getting dark (i.e., when pressed for time).

Baba Basra 5:9

Let’s say that a man sends his minor son to a shopkeeper with a pundion (a denomination of coin) and the shopkeeper measures out an issar’s worth of oil (an issar being half a pundion) and the son pays him an issar. On the way home, the son breaks the jar or loses the issar change he received. In such a case, the shopkeeper is responsible (because he should have sent them with an adult agent). Rabbi Yehuda exempts the shopkeeper because it was the father’s expectation that the shopkeeper would return things with the son. The Sages agree with Rabbi Yehuda that if the jar is in the child’s hands and the shopkeeper measured into it, then he is not responsible.