Booth & Flynn Company v. Pearsall
| Decision Date | 08 December 1930 |
| Docket Number | 31 |
| Citation | 33 S.W.2d 404,182 Ark. 854 |
| Parties | BOOTH & FLYNN COMPANY v. PEARSALL |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from Pope Circuit Court; J. T. Bullock, Judge; reversed.
STATEMENT OF FACTS.
This is an action for damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff while working for defendant by being struck in the eye by a sliver broken from an iron gas pipe by a block of wood being thrown against it by a fellow-servant.
R. E Pearsall, the plaintiff, was a witness for himself. According to his testimony, he was a farmer, forty-three years of age and was employed by Booth & Flynn Company during the fall of 1928 to help lay a gas pipe line. His work was to help raise the pipe to a level so that it could be welded at the joints. The pipe was leveled up by laying under it blocks of wood something like four feet long and four inches thick and six inches wide. Usually the blocks of wood were distributed from a wagon which was hauled along the ditch in which the pipe was laid. At the place where they were working on September 1, 1928, there was a hill so steep that a team could not pull a load of blocks over it, and the wagon was unloaded on the side of the hill opposite where the pipe was being laid in the ditch or excavation made for it. The foreman sent the plaintiff and others over the hill to bring the blocks and distribute them along the ditch. The plaintiff was asked to explain how he got hurt and answered as follows:
"Well some of the other boys and I went over the hill and got them and carried them back down to where the pipe was to be leveled up, and when we got there there was a man right in front of me and I started to lay mine down, and just as I stooped over to lay mine down the workman behind me come up and throwed his down and hit the pipe, right by the side of me and knocked a scale off the pipe or something another right at that particular time, something another sharp just hit me in the eye and cut a gash in my eye."
On cross-examination, he stated that there were six or seven of the laborers that went over the hill for the purpose of bringing the blocks back. The plaintiff was carrying one block at the time, and was bending over to lay it down when the particle of metal struck him, in the eye. The scale or sliver struck him in the eye just as the laborer next to him threw a block down from his shoulder on the metal gas pipe. Some of the laborers would lay down the blocks of wood by stooping over as did the plaintiff, and some would just throw them down.
Other evidence for the plaintiff tended to show that the injury from the sliver or particle of metal caused the plaintiff's eye to be injured so badly that the eye-ball had to be removed.
According to the evidence for the defendant, the injury to the eye of the plaintiff would have responded to treatment and was not a serious one had plaintiff allowed his eye to be treated until it got well.
There was a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff, and the defendant has...
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