Rivers v. Richards

• Decision Date: 04 February 1913
• Citation: 213 Mass. 515,100 N.E. 745
• Parties: RIVERS v. RICHARDS et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

213 Mass. 515

100 N.E. 745

RIVERS v. RICHARDS et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

February 4, 1913

COUNSEL

Wm J. Corcoran, of Cambridge, and Wm. Flaherty, of Boston, for plaintiff.

M. O Garner, of Boston, for defendants.

OPINION

RUGG C.J.

1. The plaintiff testified that he was doing his work at the time of the accident in the way in which he had been directed to do it by the servant of the defendant intrusted with the duty of instructing him. This made the question of his due care one of fact to be passed upon by the jury. That the machinery was running somewhat differently for a time before the injury was not decisive. It was still for the jury to say whether the plaintiff appreciated the resulting danger and assumed the risk to which he was subjected. O'Toole v Pruyn, 201 Mass. 126, 87 N.E. 608.

2. There was evidence to the effect that the plaintiff put his hand in a space of about four inches above a pan filled with coal, which in the ordinary and normal operation of the machinery should have remained the same during the period of time required by the plaintiff for oiling, but that the pan moved up so that the space was much less and the plaintiff's hand thereby was crushed. This movement of the mechanism when it should have remained at rest was of itself evidence of a want of repair which might be attributed to some negligence of the person in responsible control. This branch of the case comes within the rule stated with affluent citation of authorities in Ryan v. Fall River Iron Works, 200 Mass. 188, 86 N.E. 310, and in Chiuccariello v. Campbell, 210 Mass. 532, 96 N.E. 1101, Ann. Cas. 1912D, 510. The charge in this respect was too favorable to the defendant.

This is not an instance of a simple device or a particular portion of a machine which can be easily seen and fully understood by any intelligent person and about which there is no complication, and where the plaintiff points to some special thing as the cause of the injury and does not base his claim chiefly on the automatic starting. This was a complicated mechanism made up of many parts, and the plaintiff did not undertake to particularize, but although introducing some testimony as to possible causes of the starting left his case to rest mainly on the unexpected automatic action at a time when the machine should have remained at rest if it had obeyed the laws of its own being and had operated as it was designed to operate. Cases like Cook v. Newhall, 101 N.E. 72, are distinguishable. A part of the plaintiff's testimony indicates the act of an engineer in letting coal drop into the pan as the cause of his injury. Of course if this was so, the defendant would not be liable. Cunnigham v. Blake & Knowles Steam Pump Co., 208 Mass. 68, 94 N.E 450. But other portions of his testimony show the automatic movement of the machinery as the cause. It was for the jury to say where the truth was in...