Bridges v. Great Falls Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 06 October 1931
• Citation: 156 A. 697
• Parties: BRIDGES v. GREAT FALLS MFG. CO.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

156 A. 697

BRIDGES

v. GREAT FALLS MFG. CO.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Strafford.

Oct. 6, 1931.

Exclusion of such answer was proper, since the jury had seen the marks and handle, and both hadeen debscribed in evidence, and the witness was allowed to state that the mark on the gate of the elevator was about the size and shape of the handle.

Such question was properly excluded, since it called for expert witness' opinion on one of the main issues before the jury, and all the facts on which the witness was called upon to form his opinion were before the jury, and therefore the employee was entitled to have the issue determined by the jury on evidence, unaffected by the opinion of an expert.

Witness had testified on direct examination that a wedge applied between the platform of the elevator car and header to one side of the center would have the effect to "wrack" the car and, if "wracked enough," would put safety device of car out of commission. There was evidence from which it could be found that small pieces of wood were floating on the water in the elevator well following the accident resulting when elevator cable broke, permitting elevator to fall injuring employee.

Such inquiry was proper as against contention that it did not contain recital of all surrounding circumstances in evidence, in employee's action for injuries sustained when elevator fell, since the witness had testified that from his examination of device before accident he would have expected it to function under normal conditions construction, and six years as professor in department of architecture at state university,

Exceptions from Superior Court, Strafford Coutny; Young, Judge.

Action by James H. Bridges against the Great Falls Manufacturing Company. Verdict for plaintiff. On defendant's exceptions.

Judgment on verdict.

Case, for negligent injury to an employee. Trial by jury and verdict for the plaintiff. The defendant had accepted the Workmen's Compensation Act. Transferred by Young, J., upon the defendant's exceptions to the admission and exclusion of evidence; to the denial of its motions to withdraw issues from the jury and to submit special issues, to charge as requested, for a nonsuit, for a directed verdict, and to set aside the verdict and for judgment.

The plaintiff was injured by the fall of a freight elevator on which he was transferring rolls of cloth from the first to the second floor of the cloth hall in the defendant's factory. The elevator was of standard make and the ordinary type used in factories. It was of two-story construction with a travel between floors of twelve feet. A pit of cement construction extended two feet, three inches below the lower floor. The car was constructed to slide on two hardwood guides, screwed to upright timbers of the wall of the elevator well. Iron shoes, grooved or slotted to fit the guides and attached to the top and bottom of upright timbers on either side of the car, kept it in position laterally. The elevator car was raised and lowered by means of a hoisting cable attached to the eye of a king bolt located in the center of its crosshead. This cable passed diagonally over two sheaves above the car, twenty inches in diameter and four and one-half feet between centers, and thence down to a drum on the lower floor. The drum was operated by means of a shifting cable passing in front of the car at the operator's left.

The elevator was equipped with a common type of safety device designed to stop the car from falling in case the cable should break or slacken. Any want of tension of the cable released a leaf spring at the bottom of the king bolt which, through levers and rods, caused eccentric cams to rotate on steel studs projecting from the bottom iron shoes on either side of the car. Through a cogged gear, each cam turned a corresponding cam on a like stud in the inverse direction. Dogs on each cam extended outward and downward on either side of each guide in the form of finger gears which, when brought into operation, were designed to jam or close in on the guide and thus arrest the car from dropping. The cams and dogs were designed to operate simultaneously on each side of the car.

The entrance to the elevator on each floor was from the south. The plaintiff, entering from the lower floor, had backed upon the platform two trucks, each loaded with a roll of cloth wound around a shell or core. Each truck was thirty-two and one-fourths inches long supported by two wheels in the rear and a third smaller wheel in front which turned with the handle. The handles were made of five-eighth inch round iron, twenty-eight inches long, with a hand loop at the outer end which was held twenty-two inches above the floor when the truck was loaded. The handles could be swung either way ninety degrees or more. The cores were placed lengthwise the trucks upon concave cross-rests, and projected beyond either end of the truck platform. The total length of each core, including iron spindles in either end, was fifty-five and five-eighths inches. The depth of the elevator car platform was seventy-two inches. The weight of each roll was three hundred pounds. The total weight of the load was in excess of eight hundred pounds, and the weight of the car twelve hundred pounds.

When the elevator car had reached a point in its upward course where the plaintiff was able to look into the room on the second floor, the car dropped to the bottom of the well, causing the plaintiff's injuries. The plaintiff's evidence tended to show that the cable had parted at a point between four and six feet from the end affixed to the king bolt.

Other facts will appear in the opinion.

Mathews & Varney, of Somersworth (G. D. Varney, of Somersworth, orally), for plaintiff.

Hughes & Burns, of Dover (S. M. Burns, of Dover, orally), for defendant.

SNOW, J.

I. The plaintiff claims that his injuries were caused by the defendant's negligent failure to provide a proper cable and to maintain a suitable safety device. The defendant contends that there was no evidence on which a jury could find that such injuries were due to its negligence in either respect; that, on the other hand, both the breaking of the cable and the failure of the safety device to function were conclusively shown to have resulted from the plaintiff's own negligent conduct. The denials of defendant's motions for the withdrawal of issues, for a nonsuit, and for a directed verdict present the usual questions relating to the negligence of the defendant and the care of the plaintiff.

1. The cable was five-eighths of an inch in diameter, made up of six strands of steel wire twisted around a hemp cord. Each strand was composed of nineteen steel wires also twisted together. The purpose of the hemp cord was to increase the flexibility of the cable, and at the same time to keep the strands apart, and thus to prevent the wires, of which it was composed, from chafing too much against each other. The plaintiff's evidence tended to show that continual use of such a cable, by reason of its constant flexing over the sheaves, has a tendency to break up the fibers of the hemp cord and to reduce it to "a condition of a number of short fibers, almost dust"; that this condition in turn increases the rapidity of the wear on the cable by the contact of the wires with each other, and also sets up "a condition of fatigue in the metal, that is, sort of a deterioration, loss of strength"; that, upon inspection, such condition would be disclosed to the naked eye by a slight decrease in the apparent size of the cable, and by broken wires, if any, on the outside of the cable; but that broken wires within the strands would not be thus observable. It was conceded by the defendant's experts that the wires that make up the strands, "due to wear in any one place, will get worn down to a point where they will crack and break as they pass over, or bent, over a sheave," and that the weakest points in a cable are usually found in the portions where it flexes over the sheaves or over the drum.

One King, a machinist, employed by the defendant to repair the elevator the morning after the accident, was called by the plaintiff and testified that the point of break in the cable was between "four or five feet above the elevator" car, "above * * * where it fastens into the elevator * * * four or five or six feet possibly." The cable at this point flexed over the nearest sheaf every time the car ascended to, or descended from, the second floor. He also testified that the cable "looked as though it might be a little smaller" than five-eighths of an inch in diameter, which appearance he attributed to the fact of its being "so long in service it might have stretched a little." The defendant's "mechanical expert" testified that "the break was approximately eight inches long" and that "the strands were broken in various places along" that distance. The defendant's "consulting engineer" testified that, on his examination September 21 prior to the accident, he found the cable "worn in what we would call ten percent of wear on the wires outside of the cable, and there were a few, but so few that I didn't record them in my report, wires broken in the cable itself"; that "if there are five or six of those broken in any one strand we * * * invariably ask to have the cable renewed, because it has reached a point where, * * * that is theoretical, 25% of its strength is gone." There was evidence that the cable had been in use for a period of over five years, and the defendant submitted no evidence as to how much longer it had been in service. The defendant's "safety" inspector testified that nobody knows "how much it takes to break them [cables] after they run several years." As it will be seen later, there was evidence from which the jury might find that the inspections by the defendant's experts were superficial.

On this evidence the jury could find that the break in the cable was due to weakness induced by...