Indiana & Chicago Coal Co. v. Neal
| Decision Date | 11 May 1906 |
| Docket Number | No. 20,822.,20,822. |
| Citation | 166 Ind. 458,77 N.E. 850 |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | INDIANA & CHICAGO COAL CO. v. NEAL. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Circuit Court, Sullivan County; O. B. Harris, Judge.
Action by James Neal against the Indiana & Chicago Coal Company. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant appeals. Transferred from Appellate Court under Burns' Ann. St. 1901, § 1337j, subd. 2. Reversed, and new trial ordered.
John S. Boys, Lee F. Boys, and E. E. Stevenson, for appellant. John T. & Will H. Hays, for appellee.
This was an action by a servant against his master for negligence. It appears that appellee, the plaintiff below, was injured while driving with a car load of coal through a door opening in a coal mine. The door was so constructed that it was self-closing, and appellee was injured as he stood on the bumper and chain of the car, and while engaged in the effort to keep the door open as the car passed through, owing to the fact that he failed to stoop sufficiently to permit his person to escape the lintel. Appellant was charged with negligence in three particulars: (1) In not affording a doorway of sufficient height; (2) in furnishing a car that was too high; and (3) in failing to designate a person to open and close the door, as required by section 18 of an act of the General Assembly, approved March 2, 1891, entitled “An act requiring the weighing of coal, providing for the safety of employés, protecting persons and property injured, providing for the ventilation of mines, prohibiting boys and females from working in mines, conflicting acts repealed, and providing penalties for violation.” Acts 1891, p. 61, c. 49.
The principal question in the case, which we shall consider upon the evidence, is whether there can be a recovery under the third charge of negligence above mentioned, and we proceed at once to a consideration of that question: Said section 18 (section 7478, Burns' Ann. St. 1901) is as follows:
In Faris v. Hoberg, 134 Ind. 269, 33 N. E. 1028, 39 Am. St. Rep. 261, this court said: See, also, Muncie Pulp Co. v. Davis, 162 Ind. 558, 70 N. E. 875, and cases cited; Pittsburgh, etc., R. Co. v. Lightheiser, 163 Ind. 247, 71 N. E. 218, 660. As respects actions wherein a statute is relied on to create a duty, the general rule has been thus declared by one of the older writers: “In every case where a statute enacts or prohibits a thing for the benefit of a person, he shall have a remedy upon the same statute for the thing enacted for his advantage, or for the recompense of the wrong done him contrary to said law.” 1 Comyn's Digest, “Action upon the Statute,” F. The limitation upon the rule which the above statement implies is well illustrated by Ricketts v. East, etc., R. Co., 12 Com. B. (3 Scott) 160. In that case the plaintiff's cattle had passed from his close to one adjoining the railroad, and had afterwards strayed through a gap in the fence which separated the latter close from the right of way onto the track, where they were killed. The plaintiff relied on a statute requiring the company to maintain “fences for separating the land taken for the use of the railway from the adjoining lands not taken and protecting such lands from trespass, or the cattle of the owners or occupiers from straying thereout by reason of the railway.” In holding that there could not be a recovery, Williams, J., said: “The act of Parliament creates no general duty, but only a duty as between the company and the owners of the adjoining lands, and those in privity with them, and a stranger, as this plaintiff is, cannot found an action upon an alleged breach of that duty.” In Gibson v. Leonard, 143 Ill. 182, 32 N. E. 182, 17 L. R. A. 588, 36 Am. St. Rep. 376, the members of a fire patrol broke into a burning store, for the purpose of covering the stock with tarpaulins. The plaintiff, who was a member of said company, and acting as such at the time, was injured, as he was operating a freight elevator, owing to the breaking of a counterweight. He based his claim of a right to recover upon a municipal ordinance requiring that, in buildings where machinery was employed, such machinery, including elevators, “and every other thing, when so located as to endanger the lives and limbs of those employed therein while in the discharge of their duties,” should be so “covered or guarded as to insure against any injury to such employés.” It was held that the ordinance did not create a duty in favor of the plaintiff, as it showed that is was ordained for the protection of employés, and not for mere licensees. In O'Donnell v. Providence R. Co., 6 R. I. 211, it is stated that the remedy for a violation of a statute is confined “to such things as are enacted for the benefit of the person suing.” So it has been said that: “However great the defendant's negligence, if it was committed without violating any duty which he owed either directly to the plaintiff or to the public in a manner whereof he had a right to avail himself, *** there is nothing which the law will redress.” Bishop, Non-contract Law, § 446. It is stated by Judge Thompson: “The violation of a statute or municipal ordinance is not of itself a cause of action grounded upon negligence in favor of an individual, unless the statute or ordinance was designed to prevent such injuries as were suffered by the individual claiming the damages, and often not then; the question depending upon judicial theories and surmises.”
A question may in some instances exist as to whether a statute or ordinance was designed to avert the evil consequences complained of, and in some cases there may be difficulty in determining whether the spirit of the requirement is bound down by its literalism in respect to the persons within its protection, but, subject to possible minor exceptions not pertinent to the facts of this case, it may be said that once it is determined that a statute or ordinance was enacted or ordained for a wholly different purpose than to prevent the injury...
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