Paquette v. Conn. Valley Lumber Co.

• Decision Date: 04 November 1919
• Citation: 109 A. 836
• Parties: PAQUETTE v. CONNECTICUT VALLEY LUMBER CO.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

109 A. 836

PAQUETTE

v. CONNECTICUT VALLEY LUMBER CO.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Hillsborough.

Nov. 4, 1919.

Transferred from Superior Court, Hillsborough County; Branch, Judge.

Action by John Paquette against the Connecticut Valley Lumber Company, transferred from the superior court on defendants' exception to denial of motion for directed verdict and to the admission of evidence. Exceptions overruled.

The evidence tends to prove that the defendants employed the plaintiff when he was 19 years old to fell timber, and furnished him a sledge, a saw, and an ax. After he had worked two weeks, he encountered a large tree, and applied to McDonald, the man in charge of the work, for a wedge to throw it down. McDonald told him there were no iron wedges, and gave him one made from a dry spruce limb. He inserted the point of the wedge in the saw scarf and began to drive it with the sledge, and on the second blow a piece of wood struck him in the eye and caused the injury complained of. The plaintiff Lad never felled a large tree or used a spruce wedge for any purpose before he was injured.

Cyprien J. Belanger and Taggart, Tuttle, Wyman & Starr, all of Manchester, for plaintiff.

Doyle & Lucier, of Nashua, and Edmund Sullivan, of Berlin, for defendants.

YOUNG, J. The plaintiffs testimony that, when he struck the second blow, a piece of wood struck him in the eye, taken in connection with the expert's testimony that a heavy blow is liable to shatter a dry spruce wedge, warrants the finding that the splinter which injured the plaintiff came from the wedge; for it is improbable that the splinter came from either the steel sledge or the live tree, and it must have come from one of those three sources.

It can be found from McDonald's own testimony that he was in charge of the defendants' logging operations at the place where the accident happened, consequently it can be found that they furnished the plaintiff with the wedge, and expected him to use it as he was using it when he was injured, for he testified that, when McDonald gave him the wedge in question, he (McDonald) said there were no iron wedges.

This answers the defendants' contention that the act of McDonald in procuring the wedge was the act of a fellow servant. The plaintiff bases his cause of action on the defendants' failure to instruct him of the dangers incident to the use of the wedge. An employer's duty in this respect is said to be to notify his employes of the dangers incident to the use of his instrumentalities, of which he either...