Spicer v. South Boston Iron Co.

Decision Date10 January 1885
Citation138 Mass. 426
PartiesHenry E. Spicer v. South Boston Iron Company
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Argued November 17, 1884. [Syllabus Material] [Syllabus Material]

Suffolk.

Tort for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff, while in the employ of the defendant, by the falling of a heavy weight upon his head, which was occasioned by the breaking of an iron hook upon which the weight was hung. Trial in the Superior Court, before Barker, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows:

The defendant, at the time of the accident, was a corporation carrying on in South Boston a large and extensive iron foundry, and the plaintiff had been employed as a laborer therein for a period of about one year and ten months.

Among other machinery and appliances used by the defendant in said business were large ovens for baking the moulds. The doors of said ovens were so arranged as to slide up and down, and to the upper corners of said doors chains were attached, which passed up to the top of the frame and then over a pulley on each side, and on the front side of the frame near the top there was attached to each chain a weight, weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds, and to each weight a chain was attached running to the ground.

These weights were intended to be a counter balance to the door and, when it became necessary to open the ovens for the purpose of examining the state of the moulds, or to remove them, laborers were called upon, two upon each side, to pull down upon said chains and weights, and thus raise the door, which sometimes stuck in the grooves from its expansion by heat, and sometimes an iron bar was used upon the front of the door to pry the same up and to start it. The weight was attached to each chain by an S hook, made of five-eighths inch iron, but the ends were not welded together, but left open. The iron weights were not encased; but several witnesses testified that these ovens and the doors and weights were made and hung as was usual and customary in foundries.

The plaintiff testified that he was a master mariner; that he commenced working as a laborer for the defendant on August 12, 1880, and received his directions from the foreman; that he was injured on June 10, 1882, about five o'clock in the afternoon; that the foreman told him to give the others a hand on the oven door; that he took hold of the chain; that he felt something give way, and something fell on his head; that his attention had never been called to the weights; that he knew there were chains; that he was called to assist, and did so; that he pulled on the left-hand side with only one man on the same side with him, but one McAllister was lifting up on the door with a crowbar; that he had never been called to help lift at that particular door before; that the door had only just started from the floor when the accident happened; that he was called off once or twice a week to assist in raising the doors; and that there was nothing which would prevent his standing a little out from under the weights, except that he could not pull so well and there was some iron piled up at the side of the casing under the weights.

James McAllister, called by the plaintiff, testified that he was an iron-moulder; that he was in the employ of the defendant at the time of the accident; that he called the men to raise the door of the oven, and, while he had stepped away to get a bar, the weight fell; that the door sometimes would stick, and it stuck that day; that he had worked in other foundries, and the oven and the appliances for raising the doors were about the same in them all; that he never saw the weights put in casings; that there might have been some bars of iron piled up there, but a man could have stood upon them, or at one side, out from under the weights; and that he had gone to get a bar, and, while he was gone, they pulled on the chain and the weight fell.

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