Ray v. Diamond State Steel Company

• Citation: 47 A. 1017,18 Del. 525
• Court: Superior Court of Delaware
• Decision Date: 07 June 1900
• Parties: JESSE J. RAY v. DIAMOND STATE STEEL COMPANY

47 A. 1017

18 Del. 525

JESSE J. RAY v. DIAMOND STATE STEEL COMPANY

Superior Court of Delaware, New Castle County

June 7, 1900

Superior Court, New Castle County, May Term, 1900.

ACTION ON THE CASE for damages for personal injuries (No. 111 September Term, 1899).

The facts sufficiently appear in the charge of the Court.

Verdict for defendant.

Levi C Bird and Andrew E. Sanborn for plaintiff.

Lewis C. Vandegrift and Charles M. Curtis for defendant.

LORE C. J., and PENNEWELL and BOYCE, J. J., sitting.

OPINION

LORE, C. J., charging the jury:

Gentlemen of the jury:--In this action, Jesse J. Ray, an infant, by Harry Schuler, his next friend, the plaintiff, seeks to recover damages for injuries which he claims to have sustained from the negligence of the Diamond State Steel Company, the corporation defendant.

The plaintiff claims that on the fourteenth day of July, 1899, he was in the employment of the defendant company working at their plant in this City. That by order of the company and in the line of his employment, he was helping to push a buggy or truck loaded with hot iron, from the scales upon which it had been weighed, to the place of deposit; that while so engaged in the exercise of due care on his part, the truck upset and the load of hot iron fell upon him breaking one of his legs, burning his flesh and otherwise injuring him; so that he suffered great pain and injury and is permanently disabled; that the accident happened because both the truck, and the track on which the truck was run, were out of repair and defective, being narrow, contracted, uneven and dangerous; of which defective condition the defendant company had actual notice and promised the plaintiff that they should be remedied; relying upon which promise he continued to work thereon.

The defendant, on the other hand, claims that both the truck and the track were in good order. That it was not within the scope of the plaintiff's work to assist in pushing the truck. That he was not ordered to do so; that on the contrary he was warned not to touch the truck; that the injuries were received in work not in the line of his duties; were the result of his own negligence for which they are not liable.

Your province is to determine, which of these two contentions is right and whose negligence caused the injury, if any negligence there was.

While there are no new questions of law raised in this case, yet it becomes the duty of the Court, under the prayers of the respective parties, to announce certain principles of law which are to govern you in reaching your verdict upon the evidence adduced.

It is not only a humane, but a primary duty of the master to provide for his employees a reasonably safe place in which to work and reasonably safe tools and appliances with which to work, and to keep them in such condition of reasonable safety. The place, tools and machinery need not be the best nor of the most improved kind; but must be reasonably safe and adapted to the purpose for which they are to be used. If the master fails to perform this duty and injury results from such failure alone he is liable. A master may not relieve himself of his duty by delegating it to a fellow-servant of the person injured. The liability of the master remains, it matters not by whose hands this duty is performed.

While an employee assumes all the ordinary risks of his...