Boyer v. Eastern Railway Company of Minnesota
| Citation | 92 N.W. 326,87 Minn. 367 |
| Decision Date | 14 November 1902 |
| Docket Number | 13,100 - (116) |
| Parties | PETER BOYER v. EASTERN RAILWAY COMPANY OF MINNESOTA |
| Court | Supreme Court of Minnesota (US) |
Action in the district court for Hennepin county to recover $5,000 for personal injuries. From an order, Elliott, J., overruling a general demurrer to the complaint, defendant appealed. Reversed.
Hazardous Employment -- Rules for Servants.
The ordinary labor of unloading logs from flat cars is not attended with extra hazards or involved in such complicated and obscure conditions as to require, by the authority in control, the formulation of rules for the conduct of the business by its employees.
Assumption of Risk.
Where a servant is ordered, with other employees, to unload logs from flat cars, where the risk arising from the incidental performance of the work is open and apparent to observation he assumes the dangers caused by the negligence of fellow servants.
Personal Injury -- Fellow Servant.
Allegations of the complaint in this case considered, and held, that the work described therein was of a usual and customary character, and the dangers thereof open to observation, and an injury resulting in the conduct of the work by a fellow servant is incident to the common employment and remediless.
W. E Dodge, Rome G. Brown and Charles S. Albert, for appellant.
F. D. Larrabee, for respondent.
Appeal from an order overruling a demurrer to the complaint.
The material facts in the complaint may be summarized as follows Plaintiff, a bridge carpenter, was employed to work in defendant's yards at Superior. Wisconsin. Flat cars loaded with poles were placed upon a side track. These cars were thirty-eight feet in length, while the poles placed thereon were seventy feet long, each being two feet in diameter at the large, and eight inches, at the smaller, end. The poles were placed upon the floor of the cars lengthwise; five of each being laid side by side, in four tiers, with crosspieces between the tiers, two poles being laid on top, making the fifth tier. The poles were held in place by stakes fastened by three braces on each side of the cars, extending above the top tier. At the time of the injury, plaintiff was ordered from his work as bridge carpenter, to assist in unloading the cars. In this work he had no experience, the details were unknown to him, and he was under the direction of a general foreman, who had the right to give orders as to how he should perform his work. Under the instructions of the foreman and others, a skidway was constructed from the floor of the car to another skidway nearer the ground. The stakes on one side of the car were taken out, and logs were rolled off the cars, by plaintiff and others, down the skidways. It is alleged that the proper way to have unloaded the logs was to have sawed off stakes as each layer thereof was to be removed, and to roll off each one consecutively, but that defendant negligently, through its foreman, removed logs from the side of the car after the stakes were displaced, so as to...
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