Anderson v. Conway Lumber Co.

• Decision Date: 26 September 1914
• Docket Number: 8947.
• Citation: 82 S.E. 984,99 S.C. 100
• Parties: ANDERSON v. CONWAY LUMBER CO.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

82 S.E. 984

99 S.C. 100

ANDERSON v. CONWAY LUMBER CO.

No. 8947.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

September 26, 1914

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Marion County; T. H Spain, Judge.

Action by Leonora Adine Anderson, administratrix of Robert Harley Anderson, deceased, against the Conway Lumber Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Smythe & Visanska, of Charleston, and Robert B. Scarborough, of Conway, for appellant.

H. H Woodward, of Conway, for respondent.

GAGE J.

The plaintiff had a verdict below for $2,730 actual damages for the killing of her husband by the alleged negligence of the defendant. The defendant appeals, and assigns three errors: (1) That the testimony does not convict defendant of any delict; (2) that the testimony convicts plaintiff's intestate of a delict, and that plaintiff's intestate assumed the risk which killed him (3) that the testimony of plaintiff in reply, as to certain repairs after the event, was incompetent.

The deceased was 50 years old, a carpenter and man of all work about the plant. He had been with the company 12 years.

The accident happened in this wise: There were two decks, sometimes called platforms. One was called the green deck and one was called the dry deck. Betwixt these two there ran a sunken way on which a car was plied. On the green deck the freshly sawn boards were piled 8 or 10 feet high upon trucks, and the load was about 18,000 pounds. This loaded truck was pushed down an inclined ironed way to the sunken way, and then rolled upon it, to be carried up or down that way to a proper place on the opposite or dry deck. In this instance the truck had been loaded with green plank ready for transference, but for some reason the men who loaded it, and whose business it was to transfer it, were not present at the accident. The loaded truck was held in place by three chocks or standards. By the witnesses for both sides, for one witness to the side saw the event, the deceased was working with one or more of the standards which held the loaded truck to its place. The truck moved, the lumber fell from it, and killed the deceased. The deceased was at the exact locus, by direction of the superintendent, to move two or three inches towards the mill the iron track on which the truck stood, so soon as the truck should be moved off them.

The issue for the jury was: How came the loaded truck to move, and the green lumber to fall from it? The contention of the plaintiff was that the underpinning of the deck where the truck stood was unsound; that for that reason the foundation gave way, and the load lost its balance and fell.

There was more than one witness to testify that the under posts were decayed; and the appellant's counsel conceded, at the argument, that there was such tesimony. And the superintendent testified that, if the posts were decayed then the men he had sent there to make repairs were "very derelict in their duty." The defendants'...