Montgomery Cotton Mills v. Bowdoin
| Decision Date | 18 April 1912 |
| Citation | 58 So. 732,4 Ala.App. 314 |
| Parties | MONTGOMERY COTTON MILLS v. BOWDOIN. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Appeals |
Appeal from City Court of Montgomery; Gaston Gunter, Judge.
Action by B. F. Bowdoin, by next friend, against the Montgomery Cotton Mills for personal injuries. Judgment for plaintiff and defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.
Charge 1, referred to, is as follows: "I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, that, if you believe the evidence in this case you cannot find for the plaintiff."
Steiner Crum & Weil, of Montgomery, for appellant.
Tyson Wilson & Martin and Hill, Hill, Whiting & Stern, all of Montgomery, for appellee.
This was an action by the plaintiff (the appellee here) to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by him in consequence of his being caught between the rollers of a machine called a "slasher" in his attempt to handle that machine while it was in operation. At the time the injury was received, the plaintiff was a boy between 13 and 14 years of age, and was an employé in the defendant's cotton mill. The evidence was in sharp conflict as to the circumstances under which the plaintiff was hurt. His right to a recovery rests upon the version of the occurrence given in his own testimony, in substance as follows: He was employed on the first or ground floor of the mill as a "doffer"; his duties being to take full bobbins off the spindles and replace them with empty ones. On the day of the injury he went up to the second story of the mill building and to where the slasher was in operation; the machine being in the charge of a Mr. Wilson, another employé of the defendant. That machine was used to wind thread upon large cylinders, and was operated by pulleys and belts. While the plaintiff was standing by the machine, Wilson passed his hand over it and asked the plaintiff if he was going to be a "slasher man." Wilson left the machine for some purpose, and, there being then no one to guard it or to keep the plaintiff away from it, he attempted to pass his hand over the thread on the cylinders, as he had seen Wilson do when he got it caught between the rollers, and his arm was badly torn and injured. The children employed about the mill, when not at work, were permitted to go wherever they pleased about the building. Empty bobbins were kept upstairs, and the plaintiff and other employés downstairs had frequently gone up there to get them. When he was not at work, he would walk around and look at the machinery. There was no rule of the company that he knew of prohibiting employés from going wherever they pleased about the building when not engaged at work. No one gave him instructions as to where he should and should not go. No one warned him of the dangers of the machinery. He did not know that the slasher was a dangerous machine. The evidence further showed without conflict that the plaintiff's duties did not require him to be near the slasher or to be in any way exposed to danger incident to its operation, and that if a guard was put around the slasher it could not be operated. There was no evidence tending to show that on the occasion of the injury the plaintiff went upstairs for any purpose connected with the duties of his employment, that the place upstairs where empty bobbins were kept was near where the slasher was located, that that machine was on the route to or from such place, or that there was any negligence on the part of the defendant in the original employment or in the retention of Wilson, the employé, called the "slasher tender," to whom the charge and operation of the slasher were intrusted.
No claim is made in behalf of the plaintiff that the defendant is liable by reason of any default by a coemployé of the plaintiff for which the employer is made liable by the employer's liability statute. Whatever liability it may have incurred must have resulted from a breach of some duty it was owing to the plaintiff independent of any statute. As it bore to the plaintiff the relation of employer to employé this fact suggests the inquiry whether the injury complained of can be attributed to a breach of any duty imposed upon the employer as a result of the existence of that relationship. And as it appears that the plaintiff was injured in the mill of his employer, and by coming into contact with a machine of the danger of which he had not been instructed or warned, though, by reason of his immature years and inexperience, he was ignorant of, or unable to appreciate, the peril involved in handling that machine while it was in operation, the question arises whether, under the evidence, the injury complained of could be attributed to the nonperformance by the defendant of the duties imposed upon it as an employer of furnishing the employé a safe place in which to work and of instructing and warning him as to dangers to which he may be exposed. A negative answer to this question is required by the facts, plainly appearing from the above recital of the evidence upon which the plaintiff must rely, that the injury occurred at a place at which, though it was on the premises of the employer, the employé was not required or expected by the employer to be either while engaged in the work to which he was assigned or while going to or from such work; and that any danger involved in his handling the machine at which he was hurt was not a danger in any way incident to the work in and for which he was employed or in which he was engaged when and where he was hurt. The duty of an employer to furnish his employé a safe place at which to do his work has no reference to places owned or controlled by the employer at or about which the employé has no business to be. ...
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