Meyer v. Boepple Button Co.

• Decision Date: 08 October 1900
• Citation: 83 N.W. 809,112 Iowa 51
• Parties: MEYER v. BOEPPLE BUTTON CO.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

112 Iowa 51

83 N.W. 809

MEYER

v.BOEPPLE BUTTON CO.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Oct. 8, 1900.

Appeal from district court, Muscatine county; J. W. Bollinger, Judge.

Action to recover for personal injuries. Trial to jury. Verdict and judgment for plaintiff. Defendant appeals. Reversed.Jayne & Hoffman, for appellant.

E. M. Warner and Carskaddan & Burk, for appellee.

SHERWIN, J.

The plaintiff was employed in the defendant's button factory, and while passing from his workroom to a closet, some distance therefrom, he stepped into a barrel of hot water used for softening the shells from which the buttons were made, and one of his legs was scalded. The barrels were in the ground, with their tops flush with the surface thereof. No covering was over them, nor was there any guard around them. The plaintiff knew the situation of the barrels and their contents, but claims that while passing near them his attention was suddenly attracted by a large and vicious dog belonging to the defendant, and kept on the premises as a watchdog, and that while his attention was so taken the accident happened.

The issues in a case should be clearly defined by the court in its instructions to the jury, but it is not necessary that they be grouped and stated in separate paragraphs of the charge devoted to that purpose alone. It is enough if the instructions as a whole point out the entire issue in the case, and this was done in the case at bar. Siltz v. Insurance Co., 71 Iowa, 710, 29 N. W. 605;Walrod v. Webster Co. (Iowa) 81 N. W. 598, 47 L. R. A. 480. There is such evidence in support of the allegation of negligence on the part of the defendant, and of want of contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff, that we cannot disturb the judgment on account of want thereof.

The question of the assumption of risk by the plaintiff, if in the case at all, was fairly and fully covered by the instructions given, and there was no error in refusing to give those asked by defendant on this subject.

The points in the other instructions asked by defendant and refused were sufficiently covered by those given by the court as its own.

The seventeenth instruction given by the court is in the language following: “(17) Were the actions and conduct of the dog, at the time of the accident, outside of, and foreign to, and not embraced in, the risks assumed by the plaintiff as an employé of defendant? And if you find they were extraneous to such risk, and of such a nature they could...