Quigley v. Thatcher

• Decision Date: 31 December 1912
• Citation: 100 N.E. 596,207 N.Y. 66
• Parties: QUIGLEY v. THATCHER et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

207 N.Y. 66

100 N.E. 596

QUIGLEY

v.THATCHER et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Dec. 31, 1912.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department.

Action by Frank Quigley against John Thatcher and another, copartners. From a judgment (144 App. Div. 710,129 N. Y. Supp. 170) affirming a judgment of the Supreme Court for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Affirmed.

Benjamin Reass, of New York City, for appellants.

Mann Trice, of New York City, for respondent.

HISCOCK, J.

The defendants were general contractors, who had undertaken the erection of a large building. They made a subcontract with a corporation to put fireproofing in the building, and plaintiff was in the employ of this subcontractor. The jury were permitted by the evidence to find that defendants had erected on the skeleton framework of the second floor of the building a scaffold or platform for the use of their own immediate employes in laying brick; that as plaintiff walked on this structure for the purpose of reaching a point where he desired to perform work engaged to be performed by his employer a plank gave way, and he fell and was injured. The jury also had a right to find that there was no other appropriate way for plaintiff to reach the place of his labors except over this scaffold.

On this point his evidence ran as follows:

‘Q. Was this [referring to this platform] the most direct way for you to go to get to your work? A. I was going to work on that section at that time.

‘The Court: Was there any other way, is what you want to get down to now. The question is, was there any other way of getting there?

‘The Witness: No, sir, there was not. * * *

‘The Court: * * * That was the only way you had to get there, wasn't it?

‘The Witness: Yes, sir.’

There was no evidence that defendants in their contract with plaintiff's employer expressly undertook to furnish scaffolds necessary for the performance of its contract.

Under these circumstances, the question arises whether plaintiff can invoke as a basis of liabilty on the part of the defendants section 18 of the Labor Law (Consol. Laws, ch. 31), which provides: ‘A person employing or directing another * * * in the erection, repairing, altering or painting of a house, building * * * shall not furnish * * * scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders or other mechanical contrivances which are unsafe, unsuitable or improper, and which are not so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to the life and limb of a person so employed or engaged.’ We think that this question is to be answered in the affirmative, but for the purpose of doing this we do not deem it necessary to go so far as did the learned Appellate Division according to our understanding of its opinion. We doubt whether, in the absence of express agreement, there is so written into the contract between contractor and subcontractor the provisions of the Labor Law that the former forth with and without proof of other facts becomes liable to the latter and his employes for the...