Murphy v. Webster
| Decision Date | 26 February 1890 |
| Citation | 23 N.E. 842,151 Mass. 121 |
| Parties | MURPHY v. WEBSTER et al. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
B.F. Butler and J.C.M. Bayley, for plaintiff.
W Gaston and C.E. Beale, for defendants.
The evidence in this case fails to furnish satisfactory grounds for an inference, or for anything better than mere conjecture, as to the cause of the accident. The building was only two stories high, and the elevator ran from the lower to the upper floor, a distance of about 11 or 111/2 feet. The plaintiff was injured by the descent of the car upon him in the elevator well on the lower floor. In the ordinary operation of the elevator, when the car descended, it struck a dog about a foot above the floor, which threw off the belt and stopped it; but, if anything prevented it from striking the dog, the rope on the drum would completely unwind, and would wind up backwards, and draw up the car again. There was uncontradicted evidence that, almost immediately after the accident, the plaintiff was seen under the elevator car, and that the car was then about four feet from the floor, going up. The accident happened at about a quarter before 12 o'clock, and it appeared that the elevator had been in constant use that morning, and that the plaintiff was using it just before the accident, and that it had run perfectly. It continued to run perfectly after the accident, and no repairs were made upon it subsequently. The plaintiff testified that he did not know whether anything was the matter with it or not. The bursting of a steam pipe near it, about three weeks before, had caused it to stick, but it was immediately repaired by planing out the grooves on the car, and substituting blocks in which were grooves, and it was then tried, and found to work perfectly, and there was no evidence that it ever afterwards stuck. "It was shown that, if the elevator car fell from the second story, it would strike an object four feet from the ground with a force of about 8,000 to 9,000 pounds, after allowing for all possible friction."
There is much in the case to indicate that the elevator did not fall, and that the plaintiff was injured by negligently being caught under the car in the elevator well, when the car was descending in the usual way. But if we assume that the jury might have found that the elevator fell, and that the failure of the defendants to provide a mechanical device to hold the car, as required by St.1882, c. 208, was one of the causes of the accident, and that the plaintiff is not shown to have had such a knowledge and appreciation of the risk from such failure as to preclude him from recovering, or if we assume that the jury might have found from the circumstances that there was some other defect in the elevator, which might have been remedied by the exercise of due care on the part of the defendants, and that the defendants had so far intrusted to Harmon the performance of their duty of supervision of the elevator, and of repairs which might properly be made by servants, as to make them liable for his...
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