Donahue v. Drown
| Decision Date | 20 May 1891 |
| Citation | 154 Mass. 21,27 N.E. 675 |
| Parties | DONAHUE v. DROWN. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
E.C. Bumpus, W.W. Jenness, and P.R. Blackmur, for plaintiff.
Henry M. Rogers and John Lowell, Jr., for defendant.
It was contended by the plaintiff, and there was some evidence to show, that the machine which the plaintiff was engaged in cleaning, as well as some others of the defendant's machines, would "start of themselves;" that is without being started by any person's direct act The defendant contended that if the fact was so it was not known to himself or to his foreman. He testified, indeed, that this machine could not start of itself. The cause of the machine's thus starting of itself, if that did in fact so happen, must be the shifting of the belt from the loose pulley to the fixed pulley. The jury might properly find upon the evidence that this was the cause of the starting of the machine at the time of the injury to the plaintiff, and that a proper construction and arrangement of the pulleys and adjustment of the belt would have prevented such a casual shifting of the belt. They might therefore properly infer negligence on the part of the defendant in failing to provide machinery constructed, arranged, or set up in such suitable manner as to be sufficiently safe, and that a due examination of the machinery would have disclosed its imperfection. The plaintiff's expert testified that there was a tendency to throw the belt over from the loose pulley on to the tight pulley, and thus to start up the screw in the bottom of the cylinder. If this was the fact, it was sufficient to warrant a finding of the defendant's negligence. The omission to provide machinery properly prepared and arranged to guard against a danger of that kind would be negligence for which the master would be responsible, and not merely the negligence of a fellow-servant. But it is contended on the part of the defendant that if this danger existed it was a matter of common knowledge among the operatives, and that the plaintiff herself in the exercise of due care ought to have known it. It is conceded that no notice was given to her of the danger and there could not have been, since the defendant and his engineer, carpenter, and foreman testified that they were not aware of its existence. The plaintiff, on the other hand, testified that she was not aware of it either, and she contends that she ought not to be...
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