Consolidation Coal & Coke Co. v. Music

• Decision Date: 25 January 1918
• Citation: 178 Ky. 790,199 S.W. 1074
• Parties: CONSOLIDATION COAL & COKE CO. v. MUSIC.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

199 S.W. 1074

178 Ky. 790

CONSOLIDATION COAL & COKE CO. v. MUSIC.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

January 25, 1918

Appeal from Circuit Court, Johnson County.

Action by Arch Music against the Consolidation Coal & Coke Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed.

Ed. C O'Rear, of Frankfort, and Fogg & Kirk, of Paintsville for appellant.

J. F Bailey, of Paintsville, for appellee.

SAMPSON J.

While at work hewing timbers in the woods with an ordinary ax, Arch Music was injured in the leg by a cut inflicted by the ax as a result of a glancing lick made by him on the log. This action was instituted to recover damages for the injury, upon the ground that the appellant company negligently furnished appellee an ax with a defective or broken handle, and required him, over his objection and protest, to use it. It is not alleged, however, that the defendant company, or its agents superior to Music, assured appellee that the ax was safe or reasonably safe, and by such assurance induced him to continue work with the ax after he discovered the defective condition of the handle. The injured man admits that he had been working in timber woods for several weeks, doing the same character of work at which he was engaged on the day of the injury, and that he knew how to use an ax as good as anybody; that upon starting to work on the day of his injury he discovered that the handle of the ax furnished him was in a defective condition, and that the blade of the ax would sometimes turn on the handle when he made a stroke. Notwithstanding this, he continued to work with the ax, and in making a stroke the blade, as he claims, turned on the handle, glancing off the log, inflicting a wound on his leg between his knee and foot. Upon a trial in the circuit court he was awarded damage in the sum of $225, and the company has prayed an appeal in this court.

An ordinary ax is a simple tool, governed by what is known in our law as the "simple tool rule," which is stated as follows: Where the mode of operating an implement is so simple that a person of ordinary intelligence and experience can at once perceive the safe and proper mode of operating it, and he voluntarily holds and uses it in such a way as to receive injury, and there is no reason why he should so hold or use it, he cannot recover damages from the master, even though it be defective, for being a simple tool, easily understood, the servant of mature years and experience is charged with full knowledge of any defect in the implement it being open and obvious. The reason upon which the rule requiring the master to exercise reasonable care to provide his servants with reasonably safe tools and working place is rested upon the presumption that the master possesses superior knowledge, is experienced and skilled in the use of such implements, and is fully acquainted with the...