Keenan v. Edison Elec. Illuminating Co.

• Decision Date: 22 June 1893
• Citation: 34 N.E. 366,159 Mass. 379
• Parties: KEENAN v. EDISON ELECTRIC ILLUMINATING CO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

159 Mass. 379

34 N.E. 366

KEENAN v. EDISON ELECTRIC ILLUMINATING CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

June 22, 1893

Plaintiff was employed by defendant in its factory. His duty was to fill at the lower floor a coal car, which ran to and in an elevator car. The track in the latter connected with a similar track upon the roof of the building. After filling the coal car he would run it into the elevator car run the elevator car to the roof, push the coal car off weigh it, push the car 40 or 50 feet along the track to a chute, dump it, push it back, and take it down on the elevator. This process was repeated every few minutes during the day, and plaintiff had been engaged at this work eight or nine weeks at the time of the accident. When the latter occurred the elevator car by some means descended from the roof where plaintiff had left it while he was dumping the coal car at the chute, and when he pushed the car back he did not observe the absence of the elevator car, but pushed the former into the elevator well, and, losing his balance, fell in with it, and was injured. There was evidence by the official inspector that there were no automatic guards on the elevator, as required by statute, and no guards of any kind. Plaintiff testified that he knew there were no gates of any kind on the elevator, and that he never reported that fact to any one.

COUNSEL

G.W Pearson, for plaintiff.

J. Lowell, Jr., and S.H. Smith, for defendant.

OPINION

HOLMES J.

We assume for the purposes of decision that by reason of St.1885, c. 374, § 110, the defendant was using the elevator illegally, and that the plaintiff did not share equally in the breach of law. We also assume that there was evidence of negligence on the part of the defendant towards the plaintiff. But the negligence, if any, consisted only in the failure to provide an automatic guard to the shaft. So far as appears, the defendant was not responsible for the elevator car having been moved. This being so, whether it be said that the plaintiff took the risk, or that he was negligent, or that the defendant's negligence was not the proximate cause of the injury, the result must be that the plaintiff cannot recover; for the plaintiff knew as well as the defendant that there was no guard to the shaft, and we must presume understood that if the elevator car was not there when he pushed his coal car into the well, his car would tumble down the...