Collins' Adm'r v. Gatliff Coal Co.
| Decision Date | 17 November 1922 |
| Citation | 196 Ky. 517,244 S.W. 887 |
| Parties | COLLINS' ADM'R v. GATLIFF COAL CO. |
| Court | Kentucky Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Whitley County.
Action by Richard Collins' administrator against the Gatliff Coal Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.
Henry C. Gillis, of Williamsburg, and R. L. Pope, of Knoxville Tenn., for appellant.
Tye & Siler, of Williamsburg, for appellee.
Appellant's intestate was a strong, healthy, vigorous man of 58 years and was an efficient and capable coal miner, which occupation he had followed for a number of years. On the 26th day of May 1919, he died suddenly while following his vocation in the mines of appellee in Whitley county.
This is an action by his personal representative against the coal mining company, wherein it is alleged his death was brought about while employed by it as a coal miner and while engaged in its mine in that occupation, because said decedent was forced to and did breathe and inhale poisonous and noxious gases and bad air, and that on and prior to the date of his death the defendant negligently and carelessly and in violation of law failed to provide for its said mine and the working place of decedent artificial or other means of ventilation of such capacity or power as to provide or produce an abundant or sufficient supply of air, and failed to provide or maintain for such mine or the working place of decedent such ventilation as would provide to him the statutory quantity of air and because of such negligence and failure by defendant poisonous and noxious gases and bad air accumulated in said mine in the working place of decedent whereby his death was caused.
The answer was only a traverse, and the parties went to trial upon the issues as thus made up.
At the close of plaintiff's evidence, defendant asked the court to direct the jury to find for it, but the court did not then act on the motion and required defendant to introduce its evidence. Then again, at the conclusion of all the evidence, the defendant renewed the motion, and the court, upon consideration of same, then sustained it and directed the jury to return a verdict for the defendant, which was done, and the court, having declined to grant plaintiff a new trial, he has appealed.
It is apparent the motion for a directed verdict was sustained because of the trial court's opinion that the evidence failed to show any noxious gases in the working place of decedent on the day he died, or that his death resulted from breathing any such gases. Therefore, to enable us to pass upon that question, a statement of the evidence will be necessary.
The evidence tended to show that black damp (carbon dioxide) and white damp (carbon monoxide) are to some extent present in all coal mines, and that each of them is poisonous and will, when inhaled in sufficient quantities, produce death; that each of these poisonous gases is generated in abandoned parts of coal mines where water is contained, and that decedent's working place was near to such abandoned workings, and that some two or three months before an opening had been made between these old workings and that part of the mine in which decedent was engaged; that black damp usually collects in low places in mines because it is heavier than air, and that decedent's working place was the lowest place in that section of the mine; that a week before decedent's death black damp accumulated in decedent's working place and crept up on higher ground to the working place of others; that about an hour before the death of appellant there was a fall of the roof in the old workings which might have had the effect of forcing out the poisonous gas into Collins' place of work; that the only way to get the poison gas out is by ventilation, and that a certain curtain which it is claimed was necessary to force the artificial current of air to Collins' place of work was down the day of his death and for that reason no current was forced there. As to the curtain, however, the evidence shows that it was hung the morning of his death, but had probably been to some extent interfered with or torn down by the operation of the coal cars in the mine.
The above is, in substance, the evidence which the plaintiff relies upon as justifying a submission of the case to the jury, but a close inspection of the evidence discloses that no single witness, either for the plaintiff or for the defendant, testifies that Collins died from inhaling poisonous gas or that there was any poisonous gas that day in his place of work.
Collins was an experienced miner, and presumably knew and could detect when there was an accumulation of gas, not only from his own sensations but from the action of his miner's lamp and the light thereon. The evidence is...
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Wilson & Co., Inc. v. Holmes
... ... Mammoth Spring ... Co., 105 Ark. 161, 150 S.W. 572; Collins v. Galliff ... Coal Co., 196 Ky. 517, 244 S.W. 887; Marlowe v ... ...
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Southern Min. Co. v. Cornelius
... ... engaged in digging and loading coal in appellant's mine, ... when he claims he received injuries which ... Dean Branch ... Coal Co. v. Collins, 280 Ky. 1, 132 S.W.2d 310; ... Collins' Adm'r v. Gatliff Coal Co., 196 ... ...
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Southern Mining Co. v. Cornelius
...none that is of more than speculative character. Dean Branch Coal Co. v. Collins, 280 Ky. 1, 132 S.W. (2d) 310; Collins' Adm'r v. Gatliff Coal Co., 196 Ky. 517, 244 S.W. 887. Taking the evidence as a whole, it may be gathered that at some time appellee had suffered, or was then suffering, f......