Hegwood v. J. J. Newman Lumber Co.

• Decision Date: 18 June 1923
• Docket Number: 23361
• Citation: 132 Miss. 487,96 So. 695
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: HEGWOOD v. J. J. NEWMAN LUMBER CO

96 So. 695

132 Miss. 487

HEGWOOD v. J. J. NEWMAN LUMBER CO

No. 23361

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 18, 1923

MASTER AND SERVANT. Injury to servant furnishing own light not actionable.

Where a person is employed to operate an upright engine in a rural section, and which requires operation during hours after dark, who is furnished material from which a light may be made, and where the master does not undertake to furnish a light, and where the servant undertakes to furnish his own light for his work and is injured because of the inadequate light, he cannot recover from the master because the situation calls for the servant to make the necessary light and he cannot recover for his own fault.

HON. R S. HALL, Judge.

APPEAL from circuit court of Perry county, HON. R. S. HALL, Judge.

Suit by J. W. Hegwood against the J. J. Newman Lumber Company. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

N. T Currie, for appellant.

Whose duty was it to furnish the place? In what condition did the law require the place to be furnished? The answers to these questions are self-evident. It was the duty of the appellee to furnish the place. The appellee did select and furnish the place. It was the duty of the appellee to furnish a reasonably safe place at the beginning of the work. It was the duty of the appellee to exercise ordinary care and caution to maintain the place in a reasonably safe condition during the work. If lights were necessary in order to render the place reasonably safe in which to work at night in the dark, firing this boiler, then the law imposed upon the appellee the imperative and nondelegable duty to properly light the place. That it was dangerous to work at night in the dark is self-evident. That it was necessary to have light to enable one to see how to work at night in the dark is self-evident.

These matters are matters of common knowledge. The fact that foundries, factories, sawmills and other enterprises, where work is carried on at night in the dark, are lighted, is conclusive upon both the question of fact and law here raised. The legal duty to properly light the premises where work is required to be done at night in the dark has been generally recognized by all employers of labor.

It is astounding really to contemplate putting a man at work at night in the dark without sufficient light to enable him to see. There is no pretense in this record that the appellee lighted or made any attempt whatever to light the place where it required the appellant to work at night in the dark.

Nor can the appellee excuse itself from liability for its failure to perform its duty upon the ground that this boiler was placed at some distance out on a steep hillside near a branch for the purpose of being used to pump water into a water tank as a water supply for use in its boilers on the following day. It was just as necessary for the appellant to have light by which to work at the place, as it was for another employee of the appellee to have light to enable him to see how to run his engine on the track, or to run the same in the sawmill or to stack the lumber in the dry kiln, and it was as much the legal duty to furnish the appellant light as it was to furnish any of these other employees light, and the appellee did furnish these other employees light, and would not attempt to operate its mill at night in the dark without light.

And it is a matter of common knowledge that there are now many different lighting plants and devices in use by which homes in the remote sections of the country are lighted by night. Such lights are found in common use at the water tanks, on farms, and in the fields, where water is pumped at night for family use for watering the stock or moistening the earth to make the crop grow. The appellee could have provided and furnished at a reasonable expense a lighting device which would have provided ample light to enable the appellant to do his work at night in the dark with reasonable safety.

The appellee failed to discharge its duty. What followed? The appellant testified that it was so dark that he could not see the splinter, and did not see it when it was hurled back into his eye, and did not know of the danger until he had received it in his eye. It is therefore conclusive, so far as the facts are concerned that the failure of the appellee to properly light the place, caused or at least contributed to the injury of the appellant. Surely it was an issue of fact to be submitted to the jury for its determination whether this was true or not.

Tally & Mayson, for appellee.

It is perfectly clear from his own testimony and the testimony of the witnesses who testified in his favor that when the boiler door was open it lighted up the premises within a...