Bagley v. Wonderland Co.
| Decision Date | 25 February 1910 |
| Parties | BAGLEY v. WONDERLAND CO. et al. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
P. M. Keating and W. J. Barry, for plaintiff.
M. O Garner, for defendants.
This is an action of tort to recover damages for personal injury. The plaintiff was a foreman plumber and piper in the employ of the defendants Aldrich & Shea, who were performing certain work under contract for or upon the estate of the other defendant, which owned and operated an amusement park. The injuries were sustained in a small building called the 'pump house,' which contained a pump, by which water was forced to the top of a chute in the park, down which it flowed, and unguarded cogwheels and other machinery connected with the pump. The supply of water was through pipes regulated by valves just outside and turned from a window in the pump house, all of which had been built and installed after the plaintiff entered the employment and which had been in use about a fortnight before the accident. In order to reach that window it was necessary to walk partly around the pump and in a passageway about 18 inches wide between the side of the building and the cogwheels. There was evidence which, given its full probatory force, would warrant the jury in finding that between daylight and dark of a cloudy June night the plaintiff was directed both by the defendant Aldrich and by an agent of the Wonderland Company to go to the pump house and try the valves and see what the trouble was with them, as the water was not flowing down the chute as it should; that he had not been to the place for 15 days, and had never before seen the pump in operation, nor had anything to do with opening or closing the valves; that on the evening in question inside the pump house 'it was dark' and that the light was not such that he could see the appearance of the floor; that he did not know that there was oil on any part of the floor; that while walking toward the window to regulate the valves the plaintiff slipped by reason of oil on the floor, and his arm was caught on the revolving cogwheels and mangled; that a glass oil cup holding about a gill on the crank shaft of the pump was cracked from top to bottom and had a piece nicked out of it, about a week before the accident, from which oil ran upon the floor in such quantities as to be tracked about; that oil would last in this cup about ten minutes, and in the other oil cups on the machinery an hour and a half or more; that oil was constantly required in that cup when the machinery was in motion; that notice of this condition was given to the Wonderland Company and to Aldrich & Shea, the other defendants, but the cup was not changed before the accident; that within a few minutes after the accident there was oil upon the floor, the width of the passageway, for a length of four or five feet; that it 'was pretty well covered with oil' and there were marks as if a man had slipped, and that oil was dripping on the floor from the cracked cup, near the passageway; that no oil came upon the floor from any other source; that the pump had been operated for several days before the accident by employés of the Wonderland Company. Although there was other evidence which would have amply supported another view of the facts, especially as to the degree of light in the pump house, we must, after a verdict for the plaintiff, discuss the exception on the footing of inferences most favorable to the plaintiff.
1. There was sufficient evidence to support a finding that the plaintiff was in the exercise of due care. He was going into a building with whose general construction and arrangement of machinery he was familiar. Even though it may have been somewhat dark, the conditions as he had known them might reasonably have been assumed to remain permanent, in view of the uses of the building, and although the floor perhaps could not have been expected to be wholly free from oil, he was not as matter of law bound to anticipate and guard against such slipperiness as would result from the quantities of oil escaping from a broken cup. The situation is quite different from that of a man entering in the dark a strange place. Whether in the dusk he could have seen the condition of the floor or should have procured more light before proceeding were under the circumstances properly left to the jury. Hamilton v. Taylor, 195 Mass. 68, 80 N.E. 592. It is to be remembered that he had come from the greater light of out of doors, and that his objective point was the valves, which were also outside the building and to be reached through a window.
2. It cannot be said as matter of law that the plaintiff assumed the risk of injury resulting from the oily floor. The doctrine of contractual assumption of risk does not apply for the reason that the condition, both of broken oil cup and lubricated floor, had come into existence since his contract of employment. He did not in fact know of the danger which caused his injury. The workman can...
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