McCauley v. Norcross

• Decision Date: 25 February 1892
• Citation: 155 Mass. 584,30 N.E. 464
• Parties: McCAULEY v. NORCROSS et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

155 Mass. 584

30 N.E. 464

McCAULEY v. NORCROSS et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

February 25, 1892

COUNSEL

John D. Long, for plaintiff.

John Lowell, John Lowell, Jr., and S.H. Smith, for defendants.

OPINION

ALLEN J.

The only exception taken was to the refusal to rule that, upon all the evidence, the plaintiff could not recover. We therefore have only to consider whether, in any aspect of the case, upon the facts and testimony stated, there was anything for the jury. It appears that near an open hole in the floor a few iron beams were placed, which had been there for two or three days. These beams were about four and a half feet long and weighed about forty pounds each. They were about three and a half feet from the hole. The defendant's superintendent, Clark, being on crutches, and walking about the floor upon which the beams were placed, in order to pass between a pile of planks and these beams, pushed one of the beams with his foot. The beam swung around on the other beams, and fell off from them, and down through the hole onto the plaintiff. Upon these facts, the jury might find that the iron beams were negligently so placed and left that one of them would be liable, from a slight inadvertent push of the foot of a passer-by, to fall through the hole. Being left in this condition for two or three days, the jury might infer a lack of due and proper superintendence. Allowing such things to be negligently left for so long a time in a position where they were likely or liable to be toppled over, and one of them to fall through the hole in the floor, would warrant a finding of negligence on the part of the superintendent in exercising superintendence.

The fact that the superintendent himself happened to be the person who pushed the beam with his foot is of no importance because that was not an act of superintendence. If the beams were so left that one of them would be liable as a natural consequence, from some intervening cause or agency, to be so moved that it might fall through the floor, the fact that an intervening act or agency occurred which directly produced the injurious result would not necessarily exonerate the defendants from responsibility. Superintendence is necessary in order to guard against injuries from such intervening and inadvertent acts of careless persons as are likely to happen, and ought to be guarded against. The question is whether the moving...