Anderson v. C. N. Nelson Lumber Company

• Decision Date: 28 December 1896
• Docket Number: 10,284--(158)
• Parties: WILLIAM A. ANDERSON v. C. N. NELSON LUMBER COMPANY
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

69 N.W. 630

67 Minn. 79

WILLIAM A. ANDERSON v. C. N. NELSON LUMBER COMPANY

Nos. 10,284--(158)

Supreme Court of Minnesota

December 28, 1896

Appeal by defendant from an order of the district court for Carlton county, Morris, J., denying a motion for a new trial, after a verdict in favor of plaintiff for $ 4,000, which was reduced with his consent to $ 3,000. Reversed.

Order reversed, and new trial granted.

Stearns Watrous & Stearns and H. Oldenburg, for appellant.

H. H Hawkins, Alpheus Woodward, and E. F. Lane, for respondent.

OPINION

MITCHELL, J.

This action was brought to recover for personal injuries caused by the alleged negligence of the defendant. The plaintiff was employed as a knot sawyer or shingle grader in the shingle department of defendant's sawmill. The shingle department was on the ground floor of the mill, and the sawyers stood on a raised platform, the floor of which was about four feet above the floor of the mill. The saws were set in a frame or table, on shafts or arbors raised about three feet, or to the height of a man's waist, above and at the side of and parallel with this platform. There were five saws, in a straight line, and about three feet apart, which, when in motion, ran at a high rate of speed, making from 3,000 to 4,000 revolutions per minute.

Directly underneath the saws ran an elevator for the purpose of carrying off the sawdust and other refuse dropping from the saws. This elevator consisted of a leather belt, with cleats on it, and ran in a frame or box built on an incline; the distance from the elevator up to the teeth of the saws being at one end about 4 feet and at the other end, under what we may term the fifth saw, about 22 inches. This elevator ran upward from the first saw towards the fifth saw, and carried the refuse on past the fifth saw out through an opening at the end of the mill. One half the saws, which were circular, was above, and the other half below, the table or frame on which they were set, their under part projecting about 2 1/2 inches below the under side of this frame. This 2 1/2 inches of the saws was open and unguarded. The elevator frequently clogged with refuse, and stopped, so that it became necessary for the sawyers, in the performance of their duty, to take measures to start it again. Sometimes they accomplished this by going to the end of the arbors immediately beyond the fifth saw, where the elevator ran open, and pulling on the belt. If this method failed, as it frequently did, they had to stoop down and crawl under the frame in which the saws were set, and reach down into the elevator box, and loosen the refuse with their hands.

At the time in question, which was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of June 1, the elevator clogged; and the plaintiff, in the line of his duty, stooped down, and went in under the frame, and reached with one hand down into the elevator box to remove the refuse. As soon as he removed this refuse, the elevator started, when he pulled his hand out quickly to prevent its being drawn in by the elevator, and in doing so it came in contact with the exposed teeth of the fifth saw, and the result was the injuries complained of.

The only negligence charged against the defendant which could be the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries consisted in leaving exposed and unguarded that part of the saws which extended...