Clark-Pratt Cotton Mills Co. v. Bailey

• Decision Date: 14 February 1918
• Docket Number: 3 Div. 303
• Citation: 77 So. 995,201 Ala. 333
• Parties: CLARK-PRATT COTTON MILLS CO. v. BAILEY.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

77 So. 995

201 Ala. 333

CLARK-PRATT COTTON MILLS CO. v. BAILEY.

3 Div. 303

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 14, 1918

Appeal from Circuit Court, Autauga County; Leon McCord, Judge.

Action by Vashti Bailey against the Clark-Pratt Cotton Mills Company for damages for injuries received while engaged in their employment. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

While in the discharge of her duties as an employé of defendant cotton mill company, plaintiff was severely injured by the falling of a piece of steel shafting carrying several pullers and belts from its hangers overhead. There were four counts to the complaint. Counts 1, 2, and A, are framed under subdivision 1 of section 3910, Code 1907, and the charge is that said shafting was defective or insecurely fastened or hung. Count 3 is framed under subdivision 2 of the same statute, and charges that defendant's superintendent was negligent in causing plaintiff to work in dangerous proximity to said shafting when he knew or should have known by the exercise of reasonable diligence that said shafting was liable to fall and injure plaintiff. Count 4 is based on a breach of the common-law duty of defendant in negligently failing to provide for plaintiff a reasonably safe place in which to do her work. The court refused the general affirmative charge for defendant as to counts 1, A, and 4 and also refused to defendant the following charge:

Defendant was under no duty to make any other inspection of the shaft than was usual or customary in well-regulated cotton mills; and if the jury believed such inspection was made, then they must find for defendant.

There was verdict and judgment for plaintiff in the sum of $4,500 and defendant moved for a new trial on the grounds that the verdict was against the overwhelming weight of the evidence and was excessive in amount. This motion was overruled, and errors are assigned upon the refusal of the instruction, and the denial of a new trial.

Rushton Williams & Crenshaw, of Montgomery, and Eugene Ballard, of Prattville, for appellant.

Hill, Hill, Whiting & Stern, of Montgomery, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

The testimony of plaintiff's witness White tends to establish four defects in the structure or operation of the shafting, by the fall of which plaintiff was injured, which may have caused its fall, or materially contributed thereto: (1) There was an old crack in the shafting where it broke, within the hub of one of the pulleys, which had probably existed for many years; (2) the shafting was not hung properly, being out of line about half an inch; (3) the bearings supporting the shafting were worn about three-sixteenths of an inch, causing it to jump, wabble, and vibrate, and tending to crystallize or make brittle the shafting at that point by excessive friction; and (4) in the worn condition of the bearings; the shafting needed, and should have had, another hanger in the middle.

So far as defective conditions and their causation of the injury are concerned, these were clearly questions for the jury. But it is earnestly insisted that the evidence has no tendency to show that defendant or its superintendent was negligent with respect to the origin of these defects, or as to their seasonable discovery and correction.

The machinery in question had been in use in the mills for 20 years. The wabbling and vibration of the shafting attracted the attention of the witness Gobel, the overseer of the cardroom, when he first went to work about nine months before plaintiff's injury, and he called the attention of three successive master mechanics to that condition, but nothing was done to correct it. Under the evidence, we think the jury could have rationally inferred that this defective condition contributed proximately to the breaking and falling of the shafting, either by causing the crack in the shafting originally, or else by acting unfavorably upon a dangerous crack of extraneous origin. And if it existed, as several of plaintiff's witnesses testified it did, for nine months, or much longer, it carried on its face the suggestion of latent danger, and the failure either to discover it, or to correct it when known, supplied a basis for the ascription of negligence to defendant under any one of the several counts of the complaint.

All the testimony shows that ordinary inspections of the machinery, such as are usual in well-regulated cotton mills, and which were frequently made in the defendant mills by the superintendent and by competent machinists, would not and could not disclose the existence of the crack in the shafting which was within the hub of the pulley where one of its set screws penetrated.

Plaintiff's witness White testified that the crack would have been discovered by loosing the set screws of the pulley, and striking the shafting with a hammer; and in this he was corroborated by defendant's witness Pierson, the superintendent of the mills. All the witnesses agree that the crack could not have been discovered except by the method stated, or by removing the pulley and closely inspecting the...