De Costa v. Hargraves Mills

• Decision Date: 28 February 1898
• Citation: 170 Mass. 375,49 N.E. 735
• Parties: DE COSTA v. HARGRAVES MILLS.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

170 Mass. 375

49 N.E. 735

DE COSTA v. HARGRAVES MILLS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

February 28, 1898

COUNSEL

Bennett & Hall, for plaintiff.

Jackson, Slade & Borden, for defendant.

OPINION

FIELD C.J.

The plaintiff was hurt in putting his arm through the opening between the chamber and the beater box, to take out clogs of cotton, whereby his fingers came in contact with the knives on the beater shaft. The description in the exceptions of this part of the machine is as follows "Directly after these rolls comes a cylindrical box, in which revolves the beater, in such a manner that the beater blades or knives strike the lap of cotton as it comes through the feed rolls, and beat it into small tufts or bunches of cotton, which are immediately seized by a current or draft of air caused by a rapidly revolving fan, which draws the cotton on through the machine, the heavier particles of dirt falling down through a grating into a box beneath. The beater consists of a shaft whose ends project on either side of the beater box, and are visible from the outside. On the shaft supported by two arms perpendicular to the shaft are two blades or knives parallel with the shaft, which strike the cotton; the whole thing resembling the beater in an ice-cream freezer placed horizontally. It revolves at about 1,400 revolutions per minute. Over the beater is a cast-iron cover, which can be raised at will by the operator, so that the whole interior of the beater box is exposed to view. Next after the beater box is another chamber, which connects the beater box with the cages or screens on which the cotton is accumulated into a mass. The bottom of this chamber is a grating, which inclines upward from the beater box to the cages. The distance across this grating from the opening into the beater box to the cages is about two feet. At the end next to the beater the grating is 14 inches below its cover, so that a man reaching into this chamber would have to put his hand down about 14 inches in order to strike the grating. It is less deep at its other end, being inclined upward. There is near the beater a plate which extends downward from the top of this chamber about 7 inches, which leaves the opening between the beater box and the chamber about 7 inches high, and in length equaling the width of the machine, which is about 40 inches. The chamber has a cover which lifts on hinges, and in which are two glass doors. It was this cover which the plaintiff raised when he was injured."

The exceptions, among other things, recite as follows: "John P. Bodge, superintendent of the defendant's mill, after describing the machine, testified that a man accustomed to these beaters could reach across the chamber into which the plaintiff put his hand the whole length of his arm, and still not be within an inch or two of the blades of the beater while a man unaccustomed to such machinery, attempting to follow him, might get caught; that upon opening the curtain, and looking in carefully, you can only see cotton." The plaintiff testified, through an interpreter, that he was 23 years old; was born in St. Michael's, one of the Western Islands, worked on the land there, and never went to school; that he came to this country in March, 1891; that his first work in this country was "distributing...