French v. Sabin
| Decision Date | 22 May 1909 |
| Citation | 202 Mass. 240,88 N.E. 845 |
| Parties | FRENCH v. SABIN. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
G. W. Anderson and E. H. Ruby, for plaintiff.
Peabody & Arnold, for defendant.
The accident causing the injury and death of the plaintiff's intestate resulted from an electrical shock, received while he was adjusting a telephone wire connecting the house of a subscriber with the main line. If it be assumed there was evidence of the defendant's negligence arising from the defective insulation of the electric lighting wires with which the decedent while at work came in contact, the plaintiff was bound to offer some evidence from which the jury could find that his intestate was in the exercise of due care. In substance the evidence when examined tended to prove that for some years previously, and at the time of his death the decedent was employed by a telephone company whose wires were strung on cross-arms of the poles which also supported the wires of the defendant's electric lighting system. It having become necessary to make the connection, he left the central office, taking a test box with other tools, and went to a pole opposite the premises, up which he was seen to ascend. While this pole had been set in place of an old pole which had been cut off at the ground, the old pole, still supporting both sets of wires, had been attached to the new pole by a guy wire, and, from the evidence of the plaintiff's expert electrician, all the apparatus was in proper repair except the lighting wires, carrying at the time a current of 1,100 volts. A tie wire, by which one of the lighting wires was attached to the insulator on the side of the pole where he would have to perform his work, had an uninsulated projecting point, and the insulation on these wires also had been worn off in many places by friction with the branches of the trees through which they ran. The expert evidence very plainly showed that if a person ascended the pole to the height required, and his body touched the bare wire, and the telephone wire or guy wire simultaneously, or, as the lighting wires where they touched the trees had become grounded, if he came into contact with them, a circuit through his body would be complete, and he would receive an electrical shock insufficient to cause death, but producing temporary paralysis, owing to loss of muscular control.
It was into this field of manifest...
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