Madigan v. Oceanic Steam Nav. Co.

• Decision Date: 26 April 1904
• Citation: 178 N.Y. 242,70 N.E. 785
• Parties: MADIGAN v. OCEANIC STEAM NAV. CO., Limited, et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

178 N.Y. 242

70 N.E. 785

MADIGAN

v.OCEANIC STEAM NAV. CO., Limited, et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 26, 1904.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.

Action by Mary Madigan, as administratrix of Patrick Madigan, deceased, against the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, and another. From a judgment of the Appellate Division (81 N. Y. Supp. 705) reversing an order of the Trial Term setting aside a verdict for plaintiff, defendant navigation company appeals. Reversed.

Everett P. Wheeler and Clarence Bishop Smith, for appellant.

Richard T. Greene, for respondent.

GRAY, J.

The plaintiff's husband was employed by the defendant as one of a gang of stevedores, and, while engaged upon the work of transferring coal from a barge into the steamship Oceanic he was killed. The plaintiff has sued to recover damages for his death, charging that it was caused through the negligence of the defendant. The plaintiff obtained a verdict in her favor, but the trial court set it aside and ordered a new trial. The Appellate Division, reviewing this order upon an appeal, reversed it, and directed judgment to be entered for the plaintiff in accordance with the verdict rendered. In that determination the court was not unanimous, and, upon this appeal by the defendant, the sole question actually is whether it had fulfilled its whole duty to its employé with respect to providing a safe place for him in which to do his work. It was and is charged by the plaintiff that the defendant was negligent in the failure to supply lamps or lights to illuminate the interior of the coal barge where the deceased was stationed upon the occasion in question. That omission, as it appears from the opinion of the majority of the Appellate Division Justices, was regarded as having been the cause of the accident, and, because the coal foreman of the defendant was in charge of the work and represented the latter in that respect, his negligence in failing to provide the lights was to be attributed to the general employer.

The facts may be briefly stated. The coal barge lay between the steamship and the wharf, and a number of stevedores, of whom the deceased was one, were in the hold of the barge, engaged in shoveling coal into buckets, which were let down into the hold at the end of a rope or ‘fall.’ When they were filled, they would be hoisted out and up the side of the steamship. The captain of the barge stood upon the barge's deck, and, by the use of a guy rope attached to the ‘Fall,’ he was able to control the rise of a bucket from, or its descent into, the hold. The importance of this was in the necessity of preventing the buckets from swinging to and fro and against the side of the vessel. Upon this occasion, work was commenced in the middle of the day, and was continued until after sunset, when the hold had become darkened. McDonald was the defendant's coal foreman, who employed and directed the other stevedores, and it came within his duties to get out lamps whenever the darkness made them necessary. He did not do so at this time, as he testified, because he ‘did not think it necessary.’ A bucket which had been filled with coal on the side of the hold furthest away from the steamship was being hoisted, when, from the failure of the barge's captain to properly secure the guy rope, it swung violently over and towards the steamship, striking the head of the deceased against a bolt projecting from the barge's side, and killing him. The barge's captain testified that it was too dark to enable him to see into the hold, and that he did not know the coal bucket was hooked on. As the case was submitted to the jury, it is clear that the verdict must have been reached upon the theory that the defendant was liable for the foreman's neglect to supply the lights.

It was not disputed that the defendant had provided lamps sufficient, and quite available to the foreman, for the men's use. They were in sheds on the wharf, and also upon the steamship, and if they were not used upon this occasion it was...