O'brien v. Staples Coal Co.

• Citation: 165 Mass. 435,43 N.E. 181
• Parties: O'BRIEN v. STAPLES COAL CO.
• Decision Date: 02 March 1896
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

165 Mass. 435

43 N.E. 181

O'BRIEN v. STAPLES COAL CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

March 2, 1896

Plaintiff's intestate, an employé of defendant, in going across defendant's coal yard, was caught by a rope, part of a hoisting apparatus, which commenced to tighten up just as he was stepping over it, and raised him in the air, and in falling he was killed.

COUNSEL

J.W. Cummings and E. Higginson, for plaintiff.

Jennings & Morton, for defendant.

OPINION

LATHROP, J.

On the evidence in this case, we are of opinion that the ruling below was right. All of the evidence came from the plaintiff's witnesses. The plaintiff's intestate had been employed by the defendant and its predecessors in the same business for 15 years and had been employed in the yard where the injury happened for seven or eight years. The apparatus which caused the injury had been used many times in that yard, before the accident, for three or four years. He had helped put it up the morning of the day he was hurt, and on previous occasions. He had worked on it during the morning and part of the afternoon of the day of the accident. There was nothing in the line of the intestate's duty which required him to cross the coal where the rope was, and he had been forbidden to cross there several times. The apparatus was worked that day as usual, the rope touching the ground or coal every three or four minutes, and then being hauled taut, which would bring it 18 or 20 feet in the air. He was in a part of the yard where he had no right to be. The danger of being hoisted in the air, if he attempted to step over the rope when it was on or near the ground, was an obvious one, and was as well known to him as to any one. Whether we say that he took the risk, or was not in the exercise of due care, the result is the same, and no recovery can be had for the accident. Feely v. Cordage Co., 161 Mass. 426, 37 N.E. 368; Goodes v. Railroad Co., 162 Mass. 287, 38 N.E. 500; Galvin v. Railroad Co., 162 Mass. 533, 39 N.E. 186. Exceptions overruled.