Bradshaw v. Standard Oil Company
| Decision Date | 08 July 1918 |
| Citation | 204 S.W. 831,199 Mo.App. 688 |
| Parties | WALTER BRADSHAW, Respondent, v. STANDARD OIL COMPANY, Appellant |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Jackson Circuit Court.--Hon. William O. Thomas, Judge.
AFFIRMED.
Judgment affirmed.
J. W Patterson, O. J. Chapman and C. R. Leslie for respondent.
John H Lucas and William C. Lucas for appellant.
Plaintiff recovered a verdict and judgment on account of damages for personal injuries received by him on the 23rd day of October, 1915, while in the employ of the defendant, and the latter has appealed. The facts show that about three years before the accident plaintiff was in the employ of the defendant and at that time worked for two or three months; that he quit the company and afterwards was employed by the Independence Ice & Cold Storage Company where he worked as an oiler and at different times as a fireman. In the month of October, 1915, he returned to the employ of the defendant and applied for work as a fireman. He went to work for the defendant in a labor gang but was "working up or working in to be a fireman."
Prior to the time plaintiff was injured one Walgenbach and another employee were engaged in firing stills in defendant's refinery located at Sugar Creek, Missouri. Walgenbach's fellow employee for some reason was not working the day of the accident and the general foreman took plaintiff down to the stills and said to Walgenbach. "Here is a man that will help you." "You will tell him what to do." And the general foreman turned to plaintiff and said, "Do as he tells you to do." Plaintiff was regularly engaged on the day shift which began at 8:00 A. M. and ended at 4:00 o'clock P. M. of that day. He was directed by the foreman to help Walgenbach who was working on the night shift which began at 4:00 o'clock P. M. and ended at 10:30 P. M.
These stills consisted of large tanks containing oil to be refined. They were about twenty-five or thirty feet in length and six or eight feet in diameter and were arranged in batteries of either five (5) or ten (10) stills each, placed side by side. The oil was heated by means of a coal box at the front and a gas burner at the rear of the still. Two men called pressure still firemen, worked together under a common foreman; one man turned on the gas at the front end of the tanks by means of a "globe valve" while the other at the other end, by means of a torch or lighter consisting of a piece of wire about four feet long with a ball of oiled waste on its end, lighted the gas. The torch was inserted from the opposite end from the "globe valve" into a hole six inches in diameter, called a sleeve, the outside opening of which standing about four feet high and running back through the sleeve to the burner. The burner was lighted by one man putting the lighted torch through the sleeve back toward the burner. After which he stood back and called to the valve man to turn on the valve and upon the valve being turned the burner was lighted.
After the general foreman instructed plaintiff to work under Walgenbach the latter told plaintiff what to do and they went ahead and worked together from four o'clock in the afternoon until about ten o'clock that night, doing such work as cleaning the fire boxes from under five or six stills, tightening up the nuts on the still heads, coaling up the furnaces, etc. About 10:00 P. M. they went down and lighted the coal (as before stated, the stills were heated by coal fires under one end and gas fires under the other), and then tightened up more bolts, after this they went to work lighting the gas under the furnaces.
Plaintiff had never had any experience in lighting gas under furnaces but had had experience in lighting coal under stills. Before they started to light the gas under the stills Walgenbach gave plaintiff a torch which they lighted and Walgenbach said, "I will turn on the gas because I know about it more than you do; you go back and stick your lighter in and I will turn the gas on," and plaintiff was to holler "All right" when he put the lighter in. Plaintiff inserted the lighter under the first still and gave the agreed signal and Walgenbach turned on the gas and it was properly lighted. The distance between plaintiff and Walgenbach was twenty-five or thirty feet. They then proceeded to light another still but plaintiff's lighter was not burning bright enough so he shouted to Walgenbach to wait a minute, but Walgenbach, before plaintiff gave the signal "all right," turned on the gas and when plaintiff inserted the lighter there was an explosion, resulting in plaintiff's injury. The general foreman remained on the premises and was about the work from time to time. There was another foreman whose duty it was to inspect the stills and he was back and forth also and passed plaintiff and Walgenbach several times. Neither one of these foremen was present at the time of the accident nor were any further instructions given plaintiff or Walgenbach than those already mentioned.
Defendant contends, first, that Walgenbach was a fellow servant of plaintiff; and, second, that conceding that Walgenbach was a vice-principal...
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