Kelley v. Calumet Woolen Co.

• Citation: 177 Mass. 128,58 N.E. 182
• Parties: KELLEY v. CALUMET WOOLEN CO.
• Decision Date: 19 October 1900
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

177 Mass. 128

58 N.E. 182

KELLEY v. CALUMET WOOLEN CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

October 19, 1900

COUNSEL

E. H Vaughan and F. P. Brady, for plaintiff.

H Parker and C. C. Milton, for defendant.

OPINION

HOLMES C.J.

This is an action for personal injuries suffered by the plaintiff in consequence of his putting his fingers into the quadrant gear of a spinning mule while in the dark. At the trial the judge took the case away from the jury, and his ruling is before us on exceptions. The plaintiff was working in front of the mule, under incandescent electric lights. They went out, and the room was dark for a minute and a half or two minutes. He stooped to reach the shipper with his left hand, in order to stop the machine, and a finger of his right hand went into the quadrant gear and was crushed before he could pull the shipper. He was an experienced spinner, had been in the defendant's employment for four months, had worked on the machine in question in the evenings for four of five weeks and knew its construction and understood it. So far as appears, the electric lighting apparatus was in use when he began to work on this machine, and when he was employed by the defendant.

It is well known that electric lights have been found liable to intermissions in their shining, and the plaintiff had had experience of the liability in this place several times before the night of the accident. Carrigan v. Manufacturing Co., 170 Mass. 79, 48 N.E. 1079. On the evidence, it is hard to see why the plaintiff did not take the risk of whatever danger there may have been.

But, further, if the plaintiff had not taken the risk, and if there is any evidence of negligence on the defendant's part in using a common form of electric light, we still should think the ruling right.

Two pieces of testimony are relied on as strengthening the plaintiff's case, although on somewhat inconsistent grounds. One is that he had been told by the foreman to stop his machine when going in or out when anything happened. The other, that he reached to get hold of the shipper to save himself. It seems to us that neither of these gives the plaintiff any real help. The order manifestly had no reference to such occasions as a momentary darkening of the electric light. The plaintiff did not pretend, in his testimony, that he acted in consequence of the darkness being prolonged. The import of his words is that when...