Pioneer Cooperage Co. v. Romanowicz

• Decision Date: 21 June 1900
• Citation: 186 Ill. 9,57 N.E. 864
• Parties: PIONEER COOPERAGE CO. v. ROMANOWICZ.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

186 Ill. 9

57 N.E. 864

PIONEER COOPERAGE CO.

v.ROMANOWICZ.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 21, 1900.

Appeal from appellate court, First district.

Action by Anton Romanowicz against the Pioneer Cooperage Company. From a judgment in favor of plaintiff, affirmed in the appellate court (85 Ill. App. 407), defendant appeals. Affirmed.O. W. Dynes, for appellant.

George W. Shinn, for appellee.

PHILLIPS, J.

Appellee recovered a judgment for $3,000 against appellant for injuries to his left hand, received while employed in the barrel works of the appellant; this appeal being prosecuted from an affirmance of that judgment by the appellate court. Plaintiff's declaration consisted of two counts, charging that a barrel press on which he had been at work only a day and a half before the injury was out of repair, so that it would not respond to a foot lever by which it was directed. The evidence tended to prove that when other employés of the appellant had worked on the machine at different times before the accident, extending over a period of eight years before, up to two days before the accident, it was out of repair; that, after it was attempted to stop the descending press, it would still continue to move up and down; that the foreman of the company had been notified by these other witnesses at different times during this period; and that repairs had been made upon it, but that the machine worked the same after the attempted repairs as before. It appears that at the time plaintiff was injured he was attempting to remove a barrel from the machine, and, in endeavoring to do so, put his hand on the top of the barrel, when, if his hand had been on the side of the barrel, the descending press would not have caught it. It appears further that the machine, at the time of the injury, was capable of turning out from five to six hundred barrels a day, and that plaintiff had turned out that many the day before he was hurt. Seventeen days after the accident occurred, the plaintiff signed a paper, in the presence of the foreman of the company and one Frank Domanske, who was a friend of the plaintiff, reciting that the injury was received through his own carelessness and through no fault of the defendant, and, ‘in consideration that the company pay my doctor's bill, I relinquish all further claim upon said company.’

Appellant contends that the court erred in admitting, over its objection, evidence of the defective condition of the machine for a number of years prior to the accident. This was admitted by the court on a promise by plaintiff to connect it with its condition at the time of the accident, and, presumably, to show notice to the defendant of its condition. As before stated, the evidence showed that, on former occasions of notice to the appellant of the machine being out of repair, it caused the same to be repaired, but that the effect of these repairs was not to correct this failure of the machine to stop moving in response to the lever or treadle. One Jakubowski testified to the effect that he had worked on the machine about half a year prior to the accident, and that during the time he worked on the machine its condition was the same as on the day the plaintiff was hurt. He was thereupon asked by the court: ‘How do you know better than I do, who never saw it, what was the condition of the machine when Romanowicz worked on it?’ He answered: ‘There were other machines there, and the other machines worked all right. At the time of the accident I was about ten feet away from Romanowicz, working on another machine of the same construction, but smaller. I saw the machine working when Romanowicz was there. The working of the machine the day I saw Romanowicz working on it was the same as the last day I worked on it.’ This evidence was sufficient to connect the former condition of the machine with its condition at the time of the injury, and there was no error committed by the trial court in refusing to strike out the evidence of other witnesses on that ground. One other witness (Smismiskon) testified that the machine was defective, for the reason above described, three or four days to a week before the accident. At that time he was working at the machine. It is true that Jakubowski, on cross-examination, stated that he did not see the machine fall at any time that the plaintiff was working on it, and counsel for appellant then asked him: ‘Then all you are testifying about in this case is about what the machine did when you worked upon it six months before. Is not that so?’ His answer was, ‘Yes...