Berdos v. Tremont & Suffolk Mills
| Decision Date | 24 July 1911 |
| Citation | 209 Mass. 489,95 N.E. 876 |
| Parties | BERDOS v. TREMONT & SUFFOLK MILLS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Trull & Wier and H. A. Varnum, for plaintiff.
F. E Dunbar, A. C. Spalding, and J. J. Rogers, for defendant.
There was evidence tending to show that the plaintiff at the time of his injuries was less than fourteen years old, and had been in this country about seven weeks, during four of which he had been in the service of the defendant. He had never before worked in a factory, and could not speak or read English. While waiting for his work, which was about spinning mules in a cotton factory, he stood with his back toward some gears covered by a guard or shield, on which one of his hands rested. In some way not exactly explained, this hand got beyond or under the guard, and and was cut by the gear. No instructions or warning were giving him as to such a danger. The plaintiff testified that he had never looked to see, and did not know that there were gears under the guard.
R. L c. 106, § 28, St. 1905, c. 267 (see now St 1909, c. 514, § 56), prohibited the employment in any factory, workshop or mercantile establishment of a 'child under the age of fourteen years.' while St. 1906, c. 499, § 1 (see now St. 1909, c. 514, § 61), imposed a heavy penalty for violation of this law. This statute was passed in the exercise of the police power as a humanitarian measure and in the interest of the physical well-being of the race. It prevents children of immature judgment and undeveloped bodies from working under conditions likely to endanger their health, life or limb. While these considerations are important for society, they are also significant for the child. This statute imposes a duty upon every employer with reference to children under fourteen years of age. It is a general rule of statutory interpretation that a violation of a duty created by statute, resulting in damage to one of the class for whose benefit the duty was established, confers a right of action upon the injured person. A difficulty often arises to determine whether a private right arises for breach of the statutory duty imposed or whether the only consequence is to subject the violator to punishment. It is not enough for a plaintiff to prove a violation of a statute concurrent with his injury, but he must go further and show that a condition to which the statute directly relates has a causal connection with his injury. It becomes necessary to determine the purpose of this statute. That may be ascertained by the purview of the Legislature in the language it employed, having regard to prevailing social conditions, the evil attacked, the remedy provided, the practical results likely to flow from one interpretation or the other, and the public policy established. Although this statute has educational as well as economic aspects, and may have been enacted in part to supplement the general law as to compulsory school attendance, it is not directed exclusively against illiteracy, as is St. 1911, c. 310, for example. The titles of the various statutes, of which the present is the successor, as well as its context in the chapter of the Revised Laws, entitled 'Of employment of labor,' indicate that one of its chief purposes is to govern labor conditions. The title of the first statute touching this subject was 'An Act in Relation to the Employment of Children in Manufacturing Establishments.' St. 1866, c. 273. In most, if not all subsequent revisions of this act, the words, 'employment of children' or equivalent language have been used. St. 1876, c. 52; Pub. St. 1882, c. 48; St. 1883, c. 224; St. 1885, c. 222; St. 1887, c. 121; St. 1888, c. 348; St. 1892, c. 352. This statute is a declaration of legislative policy that parents and guardians or children undertaking to act in their own behalf shall no longer be permitted to bargain at all as to the work of children of tender years in specified employments. It relates to a class who are least able to protect themselves by appreciating and avoiding danger, or to request instructions as to matters beyond their understanding, or to arrange by contract for their protection, or to resist any compulsion arising from their own necessities or other circumstances. There would be difficulty in discovering instances of failure to comply with the law arising from the tendency of both parties to such failure to conceal the wrong-doing. The statute has to do with the protection of childhood. It pertains to a subject of universal interest fundamentally vital in its broader bearings to the future of manking.
These considerations require the inference that the remedy intended by the Legislature against the delinquent employer was not confined to the criminal one. The right of civil action in addition may well have been regarded as a more efficacious means of compelling observance of the law. Therefore, while the public purposes of this act are important, any member of the public so situated with reference to its subject-matter as to suffer special damage by its infraction has a right of action against the violation of the statute. Bourne v. Whitman, 95 N.E. 404; Norton v. Eastern Railroad, 113 Mass. 366; Turner v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 158 Mass. 261, 263, 33 N.E. 520; Grover v. Wimborne, [1898] 2 Q. B. D. 402; David v. Britannic Merthyr Coal Co., [1909] 2 K. B. 146; D. Davis & Sons, Ltd., v. Taff Vale R. Co. (1895) A. C. 542; Gibson v. Dunkerley Bros., 102 Law Times Rep. (Court of Appeal) 587; Rose v. King, 49 Ohio St. ,213, 30 N.E. 267, 15 L. R. A. 160; Baxter v. Coughlin, 70 Minn. 1, 72 N.W. 797; Pauley v. Steam Gauge & Lantern Co., 131 N.Y. 90, 29 N.E. 999, 15 L. R. A. 194; Sipes v. Michigan Starch Co., 137 Mich. 258, 100 N.W. 447. This principle was recognized and adopted, although different results were reached in its application, in Union Pacific R. Co. v. McDonald, 152 U.S. 262, 14 S.Ct. 619, 38 L.Ed. 434, and in Menutt v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 207 Mass. 12, 92 N.E. 1032, 30 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1196. This statute does not fall within the class illustrated by Dahlin v. Walsh, 192 Mass. 163, 77 N.E. 830, 6 L. R. A. (N. S.) 615, Kirby v. Boylston Market Ass'n, 14 Gray, 249, 74 Am. Dec. 682, Atkinson v. Newcastle & Gateshead Water Works Co., L. R. 2 Ex. Div. 441, and Johnston & Toronto Type Foundry Co., Ltd., v. Consumers' Gas Co. of Toronto (1898) A. C. 447, which held that the plain purpose of the statutes who to affect only public obligations and to confer no private rights. It follows that a minor who can trace his injury to a breach of the duty imposed by this statute as its direct and proximate cause may have a right of action therefor.
In ordinary actions for personal injury, the plaintiff must prove, as the first branch of his case, that he was himself in the exercise of due care. This involves certain phases of the subsidiary questions of assumption of risk and contributory negligence. Minors of tender years although held to the same rule of law in its general statement as adults, are yet required to exercise only that degree of care which is naturally incident to their youth, inexperience and immature stage of mental development. Although cases have sometimes arisen where the comprehension by the minor of the risks of the employment has been so plain as to warrant a ruling of law, usually that question and the duty and extent of warning resting upon the defendant have raised inquiries of fact. It is common knowledge that children under the age of fourteen are lacking in prudence, foresight and restraint, and that their curiosity and restlessness have a tendency to get them into positions of danger. There is some point in every life where these conditions are present in such degree as to deprive the child of capacity to assume risk intelligently, or to be guilty of negligence consciously. That point varies in different children for divers reasons. There is no hard and fast rule that at any particular age a minor is presumed to be able to comprehend risks or to be capable of negligence. Extreme cases can be stated which obviously fall on one side or the other of the line. In some jurisdictions it has been held that prima facie a child under fourteen years of age is presumed not to be capable of contributory negligence. Tucker v. Buffalo Cotton Mills, 76 S.C. 539, 57 S.E. 626, 121 Am. St. Rep. 957; Tutwiler Coal, Coke & Iron Co. v. Enslen, 129 Ala. 336, 30 So. 600. But the sounder doctrine seems to be that age is an important though not decisive factor in determining capacity, and that the decision of that question is not helped or hampered by any legal presumption. This is the law of this Commonwealth. Ciriack v. Merchants' Woolen Co., 151 Mass. 152-156, 23 N.E. 829, 6 L. R. A. 733, 21 Am. St. Rep. 438; Sullivan v. India Mfg. Co., 113 Mass. 396; McCarragher v. Rogers, 120 N.E. 526, 24 N.E. 812. It is commonly a question of fact to be determined in each case as it arises, whether considering his age, experience, intelligence, judgment and alertness, the particular child was capable of understanding the nature and estent of the danger in which he was placed. A situation, which might carry plainly to the mind of an adult comprehension of danger, might make little or no impression upon a child. This might arise either from immaturity or from the lack of the caution and judgment natural to youth. The contributory negligence of a child stands upon the same ground. His carelessness depends not alone upon the act done, but upon the degree of knowledge and intelligence of the actor. This statute by prohibiting the employment of children under fourteen years of age in certain employments does not purport in terms to change the ordinary rules of negligence applicable...
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