Leynes v. Tampa Foundry & Machine Co.

• Decision Date: 11 December 1908
• Citation: Leynes v. Tampa Foundry & Machine Co., 56 Fla. 488, 47 So. 918 (Fla. 1908)
• Court: Florida Supreme Court
• Parties: LEYNES v. TAMPA FOUNDRY & MACHINE CO.

47 So. 918

56 Fla. 488

LEYNES v. TAMPA FOUNDRY & MACHINE CO.

Florida Supreme Court, Division B.

December 11, 1908

Headnotes Filed Jan. 20, 1909.

Error to Circuit Court, Hillsborough County; Joseph B. Wall, Judge.

Action by Herman B. Leynes against the Tampa Foundry & Machine Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff in error. Affirmed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

A declaration in an action at law should, by direct allegation or by fair inference from its direct allegations, contain all the essentials of a cause of action. When negligence is the basis of recovery, the declaration should contain allegations of the negligent act or omission complained of, and also allegations of the injury sustained, and should show that such injury was the proximate result of the negligence alleged. When, in such case, the declaration shows that the negligence it alleges was not the proximate cause of the injury complained of, a demurrer thereto is properly sustained.

COUNSEL Epps Tucker, Sr., for plaintiff in error.

P. O Knight, for defendant in error.

OPINION

TAYLOR J.

The plaintiff in error, as plaintiff below, sued the defendant in error in the circuit court for Hillsborough county; the declaration in the case, omitting its formal parts, alleging as follows: 'That the said defendant on the 16th day of September, A. D. 1906, employed the plaintiff to work for it in the capacity of and as a machinist in the machine shop of the defendant in the city of Tampa, Fla., for the sum of $3 per day, at which employment the plaintiff was engaged and worked according to contract until the 17th day of October 1906, at which time the foreman of said machine shop, one Paul Kreher, transferred the plaintiff, without his consent from the machine shop to the boiler shop, and directed him to run the boiler making machine and cut boiler iron. The plaintiff then and there informed said foreman that he, the plaintiff, was not accustomed to that class of work, yet the said foreman directed him to go at it anyhow, but did not explain to the plaintiff the manner of operating said machine, nor the danger in working it; said machine being driven forward by power, but backed only by hand, and the gearing of which machine was not protected, but exposed. Neither did the foreman give the plaintiff any instructions how to operate said machine, or warnings as to its dangers. And the defendant knew, or ought to have known, the danger incident to the operation of said machine; but the plaintiff was without experience in operating such machines, and did not know the danger involved in its operation. And the defendant, by its said foreman, having put the plaintiff to work in said boiler shop with and upon the aforesaid machine in manner aforesaid, promised the plaintiff a reasonably safe place in which to work and reasonably safe machinery and appliances with which to work, but did not furnish the same, but put the plaintiff to work in the aforesaid boiler shop on the floor of which there was scrap iron in such quantity as rendered the place unsafe for a person lacking in experience in such work to operate the aforesaid machine in said boiler shop. And the defendant knew, or ought to have known, the danger in operating said machine in said boiler shop in the condition in which it then was; but the plaintiff, being without experience in that line of work, did not know the...