Hutchins v. Priestly Express Wagon & Sleigh Co.

• Decision Date: 29 April 1886
• Citation: 61 Mich. 252,28 N.W. 85
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: HUTCHINS v. PRIESTLEY EXPRESS WAGON, ETC., CO.

28 N.W. 85

61 Mich. 252

HUTCHINS v. PRIESTLEY EXPRESS WAGON, ETC., CO.

Supreme Court of Michigan

April 29, 1886

Error to superior court, Grand Rapids.

Stone &amp Hyde, for plaintiff and appellant.

Fletcher & Wanty, for defendant.

CAMPBELL, C.J.

Plaintiff sued for personal injuries from being thrown down in an elevator shaft, beneath a descending elevator, whereby he was bruised and injured. The case was taken from the jury on account of his carelessness in stepping down into the shaft which was filled with shavings sufficient to ease the pressure, and save him from being crushed. The question of defendant's negligence was not treated as important, and if the plaintiff had not been regarded as at fault, the case would not probably have been taken from the jury. We think that there was enough for the jury on defendant's negligence, and therefore shall only consider plaintiff's conduct. Defendant is engaged in making small wagons, and similar light articles, chiefly for children, and appears to have also done work in finishing small wood-work for customers. On the sixteenth of May, 1885, plaintiff went to defendant's factory between 7 and 8 o'clock in the morning, with one Haney, to get a load of stuff for Haney. Plaintiff drove an express wagon. He is an elderly man, who seems to have followed a good many vocations of a miscellaneous character, including farming, gardening teaching, and different branches of ordinary labor, and was then driving this express, which was not his own. He is evidently an intelligent man, apparently entirely steady and alert, but evidently possessing the heedlessness and uneasiness common to men of his bent. The building had an elevator shaft outside of it, and opening about opposite where plaintiff fastened his team. He and Haney went into the building through a doorway beyond the elevator, and, when inside, passed along the floor, and a little way beyond the inner elevator, opening to a stairway on the same side of the building, which took them to the second story, whence they followed another stairway to the third story. In that story Haney's lumber was loaded into the elevator, to be lowered. Plaintiff, after it was loaded, went down, as he says, to see to his team. When he reached the bottom of the stairs on the lower floor, the elevator opening being near and the outer door of it being also open, he stepped down into the bed of shavings, supposing, as he says, that that was the way out of doors, and was knocked down by the descending elevator, and would have been killed or hurt more seriously had...