Murphy v. American Rubber Co.
| Decision Date | 02 June 1893 |
| Citation | 34 N.E. 268,159 Mass. 266 |
| Parties | MURPHY v. AMERICAN RUBBER CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Frank L. Washburn and George Oak, for plaintiff.
John Lowell, Jr., and S.H. Smith, for defendant.
This is an action of tort, at common law, for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff while in the defendant's employ. The room in which he worked was a large one, and in it were many machines for grinding rags in the process of making rubber. These machines were in rows extending the length of the room. Between the rows were passageways several feet wide, and at intervals of every two machines were cross passageways about three feet wide. Each row of machines was operated by a long shaft extending the length of the row. There was also a water pipe which extended the length of each row, and supplied the steam and water which were necessary to the grinding process. In the manufacture of rubber it is necessary to run steam through this pipe, and then, quickly to run cold water through it. This causes a sudden expansion and contraction of the pipe, and is apt to make it drip a little at the joints. The only way of remedying this is to tighten the joints with a wrench, and the defendant employed a man whose sole duty it was to look after the pipes, and keep them as tight as possible. The plaintiff, while passing along one of the passageways slipped on the floor, and caught his foot between a coupling on the shaft and the floor. The only acts of negligence on the part of the defendant, which are alleged, are that the shaft was not covered; that the passageway was not properly lighted; and that the water pipe was negligently maintained in a leaky condition, so that water leaked therefrom, and made the floor slippery. The plaintiff testified that the water in the passageway made it slippery, and that after he got hurt he noticed that the passageway was slushy and slippery.
1. The plaintiff had been in the defendant's employ for a year working in the room adjoining the one in which he was injured. He then went to work in the latter room, and had been at work there for at least three weeks before the injury. There is no absolute duty on the part of an employer to box his machinery. Sullivan v. Manufacturing Co., 113 Mass. 396; Rock v. Mills, 142 Mass. 523, 8 N.E. 401; Foley v. Machine Works, 149 Mass. 294, 21 N.E. 304; Tinkham v. Sawyer, 153 Mass. 485, 27 N.E. 6. And, under the circumstances of the case, there was no duty on the part of the employer to instruct the plaintiff that the coupling on the shaft was not boxed. The fact was...
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