Hattaway v. Atlanta Steel & Tinplate Co.
| Decision Date | 27 November 1900 |
| Citation | 155 Ind. 507,58 N.E. 718 |
| Parties | HATTAWAY v. ATLANTA STEEL & TINPLATE CO. |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from circuit court, Hamilton county; J. V. Kent, Special Judge.
Action by Guy Hattaway against the Atlanta Steel & Tin-Plate Company. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.
Kane & Kane, for appellant. Blacklidge, Shirley & Wolf, for appellee.
Appellant sued appellee to recover $25,000 damages for personal injuries sustained while in its employ. A trial before a jury resulted in a return of a general verdict in his favor for $3,000, with answers returned by the jury to numerous interrogatories. Appellee moved for judgment in its favor upon the findings of the jury under their answers to the interrogatories. This motion was sustained, and, over appellant's motion for a new trial, judgment was rendered in favor of appellee. The errors assigned in this appeal relate to the rulings of the court on these motions. It is alleged, among other things, in the complaint, that defendant is a corporation engaged in manufacturing tin plate in the town of Atlanta, Hamilton county, Ind., and that plaintiff is by trade a tin-plate worker, and has been engaged at such work since November 1894. In the month of April, 1895, he was employed by the defendant to work in its said factory and mill as a plater to operate one of its plating stacks or machines. As a part of his duty, it was necessary for him to clean his stack and scour the rolls therein on Saturday of each week, and, in order to scour such rolls, it was necessary to raise them out of the stack by means of a chain attached to the top of the rolls and passed through a pulley overhead, and fastened to a windlass, which was attached to the wall in the rear of the stack. It was also necessary to run the oil and metal which would accumulate in the plating stack into a receiving vat provided for that purpose for each one of the stacks so operated, said vat being 3 1/2 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2 1/2 feet deep. This receiving vat was placed at the rear of each of the plating stacks, and was sunk into the ground to the depth of about 2 feet, and was under the windlass and chain heretofore mentioned. The space intervening between the wall to which the windlass was attached and the edge of the vat was about 3 feet. It is further averred that in cleaning said machine a hook was used to turn the rolls, and this hook was a necessary implement in said business, and was the only means for turning said rolls. There were four of the plating machines or stacks in the plating room of the defendant's factory, three of which were in operation; one being that at which plaintiff worked, and was situated on the north side of the room. The other two were situated on the south side, opposite to the machine operated by plaintiff. On Saturday, June 29, 1895, plaintiff, in the discharge of his duties as an employé of the defendant, was engaged in cleaning his machine, and for the purpose of cleaning it he had emptied or run the oil therein contained into the receiving vat heretofore mentioned, which vat was entirely open, uncovered, and unprotected. He avers that there ought to have been a hook supplied to be used for the purpose heretofore mentioned for each one of said machines, but, upon the contrary, there was but one of said hooks furnished for the use of all the platers to be used by them in cleaning their stacks or machines. At the time and upon the occasion heretofore mentioned he went to the machine situated on the south side of the room to get this hook to use it in cleaning his machine, and thereupon discovered that it was not in its proper place in front of the machine, but had been placed in the rear thereof. In order to procure the hook it was necessary for plaintiff to pass over the narrow space between the wall and the vat and under the chain and windlass fastened to the wall. The machine on the south side of the wall had just been cleaned in the manner heretofore stated, and the receiving vat in its rear was filled with hot oil, and was uncovered and unprotected. The floor about this machine was completely covered with a layer of sawdust. In passing this vat, the plaintiff, without any fault or negligence on his part, stepped on some oil which had been spilled on the floor by the side of said vat, which oil had been covered over with sawdust so as to completely conceal it from view; and in so stepping plaintiff slipped and fell into the hot oil contained in the vat in question, and thereupon sustained the serious injuries of which he complains. It is further alleged that these injuries were sustained by plaintiff without any fault upon his part, and were wholly attributable to the negligence of the defendant, in this, to wit, that the servants employed by it to operate the said plating machine where the plaintiff was injured as aforesaid were inexperienced workmen, and without sufficient skill to operate said machine, and were not familiar with its operations, nor with the duties devolving upon them while engaged in the operation of the said machine,-all of which was known to the defendant; that on account of the imprudence and unskillfulness of said employés, caused by their inexperience and want of familiarity of their said duties so as to operate the said plating machines in a safe and proper manner, these employés permitted oil which had been spilled upon the floor to remain there, and, instead of cleaning it up, they covered it over with sawdust, so as to completely conceal the same, all of which made it dangerous to go about said machine, and all of which was fully known to the defendant and unknown to the plaintiff when he slipped by reason of said oil, and was thrown into said vat and injured, as aforesaid alleged. The complaint, after describing the severity and character of the injury sustained by the plaintiff by falling into the oil vat in question, then proceeds to charge that the defendant ought to have furnished him with one of the hooks heretofore mentioned with which to perform the duties required. It is alleged that each of said plating machines ought to have been supplied with one of such hooks; that the plaintiff frequently requested the defendant to furnish him one of these hooks, and the defendant, with each request, promised to comply therewith, but negligently failed to do so; that defendant also negligently failed to provide a covering for the vat into which plaintiff was thrown when he received his injury, and that it negligently permitted the said vat to remain open and uncovered; and by reason of the aforesaid respective acts of negligence on defendant's part it is charged that the plaintiff has been permanently injured, as heretofore shown.
If the facts set forth in the complaint can be said to be averred in such a manner as to sufficiently disclose a cause of action by reason of the defendant's negligence, such cause must be attributed to the act of the defendant in the employing of unskillful and inexperienced servants to operate the stack or machine at which plaintiff was injured by being thrown into the oil vat situated near such machine. It is charged that these servants, by reason of their inexperience and lack of skill in the operation of their plating machine, permitted large quantities of oil to remain on the floor, and covered the same over with sawdust, so as to conceal its presence, and thereby render it dangerous to go about said machine. This negligence, under the theory of the complaint, seems to be intended as constituting the proximate cause of plaintiff's injury. We are of the opinion that the insufficiency in the number of the particular hooks which were used in cleaning the stacks or machines in question, and the further fact that the vat into which plaintiff fell was uncovered, are not disclosed, under the averments of the complaint, to have such essential connection with the accident in controversy as to lend any material support to the particular and principal wrong of the defendant which plaintiff in his complaint attributes to be the proximate cause of his injury. With this view of the complaint, we may next inquire in respect to the facts found by the jury in their answers to the interrogatories submitted to them. The facts disclosed by these special findings, among others, may be said to be substantially as follows: Plaintiff, at the time of the accident, was a young man of the age of 22 years, endowed with ordinary intelligence. Plaintiff, previous to the accident, had been engaged elsewhere in the manufacture of tin plate for about eight months, and prior to his injury he had been engaged in operating for defendant one of its plating machines for about two months. The defendant company, for some months prior to the 29th day of June, 1895, the day upon which...
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