Miller Mfg. Co. Inc v. Loving

• Decision Date: 12 June 1919
• Parties: MILLER MFG. CO., Inc. v. LOVING.
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

99 S.E. 591

MILLER MFG. CO., Inc.

v.LOVING.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.

June 12, 1919.

Error to Law and Equity Court of Richmond.

Action by Wilbur M. Loving, by, etc., against the Miller Manufacturing Company, Incorporated. To review judgment for plaintiff, defendant brings error. Affirmed.

R. L. Montague, Daniel Grinnan, and C. V. Meredith, all of Richmond, for plaintiff in error.

David Meade White and G. B. White, both of Richmond, for defendant in error.

WHITTLE, P. This action was brought by the defendant in error, an infant under the age of 16 years, who sued by his next friend, against the plaintiff in error, a corporation engaged in the manufacture and sale of sash, blinds, doors, and a general wood-manufacturing business, to recover damages for a personal injury received by the plaintiff while in the employment of the defendant, resulting in the loss of the fingers of his right hand, which were cut off by a ripsaw or cut-off saw operated by the defendant, and alleged to have been occasioned by its negligence. The trial resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff for $8,000, upon which the judgment under review was rendered.

In the case of the Standard Red Cedar Chest Co. v. Johnson C. Monroe, 99 S. E. 589, an infant suing by his next friend, in which an opinion was handed down at the present term, a recovery was sustained in a motion under the child labor law by the plaintiff, a child under the age of 14 years, for a similar injury. The differentiating features of the two cases arise from the inequality in the ages of the plaintiffs. Monroe was under 14 years of age, and consequently his action was brought under the first section of the act (Laws 1914, c. 339); while Loving's case, he being between the ages of 14 and 16, is controlled by and involves the construction ofthe third section. If, however, we shall be of opinion that, according to the correct interpretation of section 3, as applied to the evidence, the employment of Loving was contrary to the provisions of the act and unlawful, then; in principle, the two cases are identical (save only that the maturer age of living would render him more amenable to the contributory negligence doctrine), and the opinion in Monroe's case would be equally applicable in the instant case, and need not be repeated.

In a note in the trial below the accomplished judge of the law and equity court makes the following pertinent observations (which will be adopted as part of the opinion of this court):

"The plaintiff * * * offered evidence tending to prove that the minor plaintiff, being under the age of 16 years and over the age of 14 years, came within the protection of the statute approved March 27, 1914, relating to the employment of children in factories, etc. It is objected that this evidence * * * can, under no character of proof, be held to be the proximate cause of the injury to which the plaintiff has testified. This statute belongs to a class of statutes, which exist in a large number, perhaps in a majority of the states of the Union now and for several years past, and which, therefore, have been the subject of analysis and decision by the courts in the various states. It seems to be settled by the weight of authority that under a section such as the first ...