Bernier v. Greenville Mills Inc.
| Decision Date | 25 April 1944 |
| Docket Number | No. 3468.,3468. |
| Citation | 37 A.2d 5 |
| Parties | BERNIER v. GREENVILLE MILLS, Inc. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Transferred from Superior Court, Hillsborough County; Young, Judge.
Proceeding under Workmen's Compensation Act by Marcel Bernier, employee, by his next friend, opposed by Greenville Mills, Incorporated, employer, for disability compensation. Transferred on defendant's exceptions.
Judgment for plaintiff in accordance with opinion.
Petition for workman's compensation under R.L. c. 216. There was an award for the plaintiff. The defendant excepted to the denial of its motion to dismiss, to rulings and findings made by the Presiding Justice, and to the method of computing the award. Transferred by Young, C.J., on the defendant's bill of exceptions. The facts appear in the opinion.
Thomas J. Leonard, of Nashua (John E. Allen, of Keene, on the brief), for plaintiff.
Alvin A. Lucier, of Nashua, for defendant.
The plaintiff went to work for the defendant when he was sixteen and was injured on April 17, 1942, when he had been employed for four weeks. His work in the defendant's textile mill consisted in part of opening packages of bobbins and putting them into drums for use. The plaintiff had to use shears to cut the iron straps that bound the packages, and the shears were hung on a post on the floor below that where the plaintiff performed his chief duties.
On the day of his injury the plaintiff, in the course of his duties, had to go to the lower floor to get the shears. After going down stairs he had to pass three machines, one of which, the shearer, was then in operation. The plaintiff stopped near this machine for a brief time to talk with another operative. While thus talking, he put his hand on the cloth passing through the shearer, his hand came into contact with the knives, and he lost all four fingers of the left hand.
The shearer was designed to cut off threads left hanging after the cloth was woven. The cloth passed between two sets of knives above and two below. Each set was constructed something like a lawn mower. A hood over the knives permitted air to suck the threads away from the cloth so that the knives would cut them. One set of the upper knives had some sort of a guard. The other set was unguarded, and it was this set that cut off the plaintiff's fingers.
One situated as the plaintiff was could see the loose threads standing erect, and the plaintiff did see them. He testified that he could also see something turning, but, being wholly unfamiliar with the machine, did not know that it was a set of knives; that he was curious to know how the cloth felt and why the threads rose; and for that reason he put his hand on the cloth near the suction pipe, and the suction drew his hand in. He had never received any sort of warning about the machine, and inferentially had not been forbidden to touch the cloth.
Upon this evidence the Presiding Justice properly found that the injury was due “merely to his attempt to satisfy his curiosity as to how the cloth felt and how the machine operated.” The defendant argues that when the plaintiff thus acted out of mere curiosity he stepped aside from the course of his employment, that the employment was not a cause of his injuries, and consequently he is not entitled to compensation. The Presiding Justice found, however, that the plaintiff's “investigation was not expressly forbidden by the defendant and was something that reasonably might be expected as a natural thing on the part of a boy of the plaintiff's age, experience and apparent mentality.” The controlling effect of this finding, if sustainable, is admitted by the defendant.
The expectability of the exercise of mere curiosity is not the sole test of whether there was a departure from the course of employment and whether the employment was in any part causal of the plaintiff's injuries. In Whitham v. Gellis, 91 N.H. 226, 16 A.2d 703, 704, an employee at a filling station left, crossed the street to a store, made a purchase for his personal use, and was hit by a truck as he was returning to the station. His errand was not forbidden and was “one reasonably expected to be...
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...103 A.2d 111, 113. We are aware that 'this Court has always given a liberal construction to the compensation act'. Bernier v. Greenville Mills, 93 N.H. 165, 168, 37 A.2d 5, 6. This rule has been consistently followed and we believe should continue to be. However, liberal construction cannot......
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...in view of the liberal interpretation given to this phrase in our law. Whitham v. Gellis, 91 N.H. 226, 16 A.2d 703; Bernier v. Greenville Mills, 93 N.H. 165, 37 A.2d 5; Maltais v. Equitable Life Assurance Society, 93 N.H. 237, 240, 40 A.2d 837, 839. While it is true that the assault in the ......
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