Avilla v. Nash

• Decision Date: 20 March 1875
• Citation: 117 Mass. 318
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: Manuel Avilla v. Nathaniel C. Nash & others

117 Mass. 318

Manuel Avilla v. Nathaniel C. Nash & others

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

March 20, 1875

Suffolk. Tort for personal injuries. The declaration alleged that the plaintiff was employed by the defendants in their sugar refinery, and, while in the performance of the duties of his employment and using due care, he was standing on an elevator in said refinery, which, and the apparatus and ropes of which, the defendants allowed to be in an unsafe dangerous and unsuitable condition, of which the plaintiff had received from the defendants no caution, notice or instruction, whereby the same gave way and fell, and the plaintiff was injured. Answer, a general denial.

At the trial in this court, before Endicott, J., it appeared in evidence that the defendants owned a sugar refinery, in which was an elevator used for hoisting sugar from one story of the building to another; that the car of the elevator was suspended and raised by a single iron wire rope seven eighths of an inch in diameter, which rope passed over two 24-inch sheaves and wound round a 26-inch drum; that on November 16 1872, the plaintiff, with three other men, had placed on the elevator an iron tank nearly filled with melted sugar; the tank and contents weighed about 2500 pounds, and the four men with the tank were ascending from the third to the fifth floor, when the wire rope broke, and the elevator with the men fell to the basement, injuring the plaintiff.

Evidence was introduced showing that it had been customary for the men to wheel tanks on to the elevator, and go up with them frequently for many months, up to the time of the disaster. The defendants' foreman testified that whenever he saw men riding on the elevator he notified them that it was against the rules of the house, and that they rode at their own risk. The plaintiff and two men who were on the elevator with him when it fell, all of whom had worked on the elevator several months, denied that any such notice had been given them or to any persons in their hearing.

Evidence was also introduced tending to show that the elevator was and had been in an unsafe condition, and also that the defendants' foreman had forbidden the plaintiff and others working with him to ride on the elevator, and notified them that it was against the rules of the house. All this was denied by the plaintiff, and the evidence as to the condition of the elevator and the notice to the plaintiff and others was conflicting and contradictory.

The defendants put up a printed notice after the injury forbidding men to ride on the elevator, but there was none before. The defendants' superintendent testified that he had informed his foreman that it was against the rules of the house for men to ride on the elevator, and requested him to notify the men of the rule, but did not know whether the foreman actually did notify the plaintiff and other men or not.

The judge, among other rulings and instructions, instructed the jury as follows: "The rules of the defendants' house in regard to persons riding on the elevator have an important bearing on the questions of this case. If you find that it was the rule of the defendants'...