Aziz v. Atlantic Cotton Mills
| Decision Date | 11 September 1905 |
| Citation | 75 N.E. 73,189 Mass. 156 |
| Parties | AZIZ v. ATLANTIC COTTON MILLS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Knox & Coulson and Mahoney, Crowell & Sullivan, for plaintiff sweeney, Dow & Cox, for defendant.
This is an action at common law for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff while in the employ of the defendant. At the trial in the superior court, at the close of the plaintiff's evidence, the judge directed a verdict for the defendant, and the case is before us on the plaintiff's exceptions.
The plaintiff is a Syrian, and came to this country five or six months before the accident complained of. He went to work for the defendant on the second or third day after his arrival. At the time of the accident, June 12, 1902, he was about 19 years old, and could not speak English. The only evidence as to the accident came from the plaintiff, and was given through an interpreter. He was first employed as a roving boy, and his duties consisted in carrying roving from one set of machines in one part of the mill to another set of machines in another part. For about two months preceding the accident, in addition to his duties as roving boy, he swept the floor and cleaned around certain machines, but not around the machine on which he was injured. He never had worked on any machine in the mills of the defendant before the day of the accident, nor on any machine anywhere, and before he came to this country he had worked on a farm in Syria. On the day of the accident he was directed by the second hand to go to work on four machines, which are known as 'Kitson Two Beater Breaker Lappers,' and he was instructed to put the laps of cotton on at the feed end, and, after the cotton had passed through the machine, to take the laps off at the other end, and this was all the instruction or direction that he received. He worked on these machines during the morning, and returned to work in the afternoon at 1 o'clock, and he had not started or stopped the machine during the morning or when he returned to work in the afternoon. About half past 1 o'clock on this same day, the first the plaintiff ever had worked on these machines, one of the machines was stopped by the clogging of cotton in a beater box, and while the driving belt was running from the machine to the main shafting. When the machine stopped, the plaintiff lifted the cover of the second beater box about three or four inches, and saw that there was a considerable amount of cotton there, and he put his right hand in to take hold of the cotton, when the machine started and his hand and arm was struck by the beaters, and torn and lacerated so that it was necessary to amputate the arm above the elbow. The plaintiff further testified on cross-examination that he himself knew that the picker picked the cotton and made it into a lap; that he never had been the cover of the beater raised by anybody; that he raised the cover four or five inches by taking hold of...
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