American Cast Iron Pipe Co. v. Landrum

• Decision Date: 01 May 1913
• Citation: 183 Ala. 132,62 So. 757
• Parties: AMERICAN CAST IRON PIPE CO. v. LANDRUM.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

62 So. 757

183 Ala. 132

AMERICAN CAST IRON PIPE CO. v. LANDRUM.

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 1, 1913

Rehearing Denied June 19, 1913

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; E.C. Crowe, Judge.

Action by John Landrum against the American Cast Iron Pipe Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

McClellan J., dissenting.

J.T Stokeley and R.H. Scrivner, both of Birmingham, for appellant.

Denson & Denson, of Birmingham, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Defendant (appellant) was engaged in making iron pipe. Plaintiff was its employé. Count 2 averred that plaintiff's injury was caused by a defect in defendant's apparatus for hooking up cores. Count 3, which was added during the progress of the trial, averred that plaintiff's injury was caused by the negligence of defendant's superintendent in that he "negligently allowed the pins which held the cores in the shacks to be made weak and brittle." The fact was that after the core was drawn up out of the pit, in which it stood while receiving the molten iron, in some way it became detached from the chain by which a crane had lifted it and fell upon plaintiff (appellee), causing the injuries for which he sought to recover.

Appellant has argued the proposition that count 2 insufficiently designated and described the part of defendant's works or plant alleged to be defective, and hence that there was error in overruling its demurrer. But, in the view we have taken of the case, we have not found it necessary to pass upon the the question so raised.

In lifting cores from the pit the hoisting apparatus of a crane was attached to the core by means of a clevis, or shack, and a pin which passed through the holes in the clevis and the core. It was plaintiff's business to adjust these pins when the core was ready to be lifted and then, after the core had been lifted, to detach the lifting apparatus by withdrawing the pin. The clevis and pins would take up some heat from the metal of the pipe, but on ordinary occasions, when things were moving normally, the pins did not get so warm but that plaintiff and other employés might safely handle them with leathers which were supplied by defendant and commonly used by employés, but when some hitch occurred in the operation the pins would become so hot that they could not be so handled. Occasionally also the pins would, when heated to an unusual degree, bend under the strain of lifting the cores from the pit.

Plaintiff sought to show that defendant followed or allowed its employés to follow the bad practice of cooling the pins by dipping them in a barrel of water when they became overheated, thus so impairing their strength and efficiency that under the weight of the cores they would either bend or break, and his evident purpose was to have the jury infer that on the occasion of plaintiff's injury the pin then and there in use either bent or broke, and the jury, it seems, did so infer.

Upon due consideration of all the evidence, we are of opinion that the inference was not warranted. There was nothing offered on plaintiff's part to show that the pin in this case either bent or broke except that the accident happened and had to be accounted for in some way. On the other hand, defendant's evidence tended strongly to show that the pin neither broke nor bent, but that it fell from its place after the core had been lifted from the pit and while it was being transferred or being prepared for transfer, to a car for removal, and from this it might have been inferred that it fell from its place because it had not been properly inserted. But, as we have said, it was plaintiff's business to insert the pin, and of course it was his duty to insert it properly. If his injury resulted from his failure to do so he cannot recover.

Negligence on the part of the master is not to be inferred from the bare fact that an injury happens to his employé. The complaining employé assumes the burden of showing...