Chartier v. Barre Wool Combing Co., Ltd.

• Decision Date: 05 January 1918
• Parties: EVA CHARTIER, administratrix, v. BARRE WOOL COMBING COMPANY, LIMITED.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

229 Mass. 153

EVA CHARTIER, administratrix, v. BARRE WOOL COMBING COMPANY, LIMITED.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

January 5, 1918

October 2 1917.

Present: RUGG, C.

J., BRALEY, DE COURCY, & PIERCE, JJ.

Negligence Contributory. Electricity. Evidence, Matters of common knowledge.

It has become a matter of common knowledge that physical harm is likely to follow contact with a wire charged with an electric current and also that copper wires are used for the transmission of such a current.

Where before the enactment of St. 1914, c. 553, a painter, whose employer had agreed to paint a large iron smoke stack on the top of a power house, twice already had ascended a ladder placed against the stack, the foot of which, instead of being put on the roof of the power house where it might have been put perfectly well, had been placed on the small adjoining roof of a substation of an electric light company, which was surrounded by a parapet wall from eight to twelve inches high enclosing a space substantially occupied by copper wires uninsulated and carrying a high voltage of electricity plainly open to view and sizzling and hissing, and where this painter, on returning from partaking of refreshments at a neighboring hotel, went on the roof of the electric light substation without rubbers or gloves and placed one hand on the ladder ready to ascend it for the third time, and received a shock of electricity that resulted in his death it was held, that as matter of law he was not in the exercise of due care at the time of his injury, and that neither the proprietor of the power house and stack nor the electric light company maintaining the wires was liable for causing his injury or death.

TWO ACTIONS OF TORT by the administratrix of the estate of Augustine Chartier, late of Ware, the first against the Barre Wool Combing Company, Limited, a corporation having its principal place of business at Barre, and the second against the Gardner Electric Light Company, a corporation, for causing the conscious suffering and death of the plaintiff's intestate by a shock from an electric wire carrying sixty-six thousand volts of electricity received by him on March 11, 1914, and resulting in his death on March 16, 1914. Writs dated March 3, 1915.

In the Superior Court the cases were tried together before Sanderson, J. The evidence relating to the question whether the plaintiff's intestate was in the exercise of due care is described in the opinion. At the close of the evidence, the defendants among other requests, asked the judge to rule that there was no evidence that the plaintiff's intestate was in the exercise of due care and that the plaintiff could not recover.

The judge refused to make this and other rulings requested by the defendants and submitted the cases to the jury.

The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in each of the cases in the sum of $1,500 for conscious suffering and in the sum of $2,500 for causing death, the verdict being the same against each of the defendants. After the return of the verdicts but before their recording the presiding judge under St. 1915, c. 185, reserved leave, with the assent of the jury, to enter a verdict in each case for the defendant if upon the exceptions taken or the questions of law reserved it should be decided that such verdicts for the defendants should have been entered. Each of the defendants alleged exceptions.

F. F. Dresser, (G.

P. Hughes with him,) for the defendant in the first case.

C. C. Milton, (F.

L. Riley with him,) for the defendant in the second case.

E. H. Vaughan & G.

D. Storrs, for the plaintiff, submitted a brief.

PIERCE, J. At the time of the accident the intestate was in the employ of one Gauette as a painter. Gauette had entered into an agreement with the defendant in the first case, the Barre Wool Combing Company, Limited, to paint an iron smoke stack for a lump sum of money. He was to furnish men, all rigging, stock and material, -- everything to go right on with the job except ladders, which that defendant had and agreed to lend.

The iron stack was about one hundred and four feet high and five feet in diameter, with a permanent iron ladder running from the top to a point thirty-four feet and six inches above the roof of a power house containing a steam turbine and boiler. The roof of this building was eighty-two feet by fifty-two feet and was clear and unobstructed. The stack stood separate and some feet distant from the side of the power house.

Adjoining the power house and two feet and four inches...