Ryan v. Fall River Iron Works Co.
| Decision Date | 26 November 1908 |
| Citation | 200 Mass. 188,86 N.E. 310 |
| Parties | RYAN v. FALL RIVER IRON WORKS CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
John W. Cummings and Charies R. Cummings, for plaintiff.
Richard P. Borden, for defendant.
This is an action of tort brought under the employer's liability act, for injuries occasioned to the plaintiff while an operator in the weave room of the defendant's cotton mill, and caused by a defect in its ways, works, and machinery. The plaintiff had been at work for the defendant for about 13 years prior to the accident. One of the machines upon which she worked was a Mason loom, which had been in use a good many years. It was started and stopped by a shipper which moved the belt on to and from a tight and a loose pulley. The plaintiff testified, in substance, that about three months before the accident she had a lot of trouble with this loom. It required oiling more frequently than any other loom, and the pulleys were 'going up and down' it not being her duty to care for the machinery, she reported, and a loom fixer did something to it. The following week he took both pulleys off, and did some filing, and then replaced the pulleys, and put some pieces of tin or hoop iron in the side of the loom where the shaft runs above the box, 'between the box and the side of the loom holding the box into the side of the loom.' Some of these pieces came out twice and dropped on the floor, and she again called the fixer's attention to it. After these pieces fell out, both the tight and loose 'pulleys would keep jumping up and down' at the same time, both when the belt was on the loose pulley and when it was on the tight pulley. The pieces seemed to her to be put in to prevent the shaking of the pulleys. After the loom had been fixed, it did not run right, and the shafting used to get hot, and the fixer came to it. It had been running all right for a week before the accident. There was also evidence tending to show that the use of hoop iron for holding the box of the shaft, on which were tight and loose pulleys, into the side of the loom, was not a proper appliance, and that its use for packing, although common, was not right, and the tendency of such appliances, the purpose of which was to hold the shaft true, would be to let the shaft get out of true, and that this would permit the belt to creep from the loose to the tight pulley. According to the plaintiff, the accident happened in this way: She stopped the loom for the purpose of repairing a bad place in the weaving. While doing this, with no one else near, the loom started without any apparent cause, and caught and injured her arm. The force of all this testimony was broken somewhat by the cross-examination, but the jury might still have given it full credence. There was also testimony from the loom fixer of the defendant that the repairs made consisted of replacing an old and worn out shaft with a new one. This evidence, if believed, was sufficient to bring the case within the rule established in a considerable number of decisions. In most cases of the automatic starting of machines from a state of rest, there has been some evidence of a previous similar starting, with notice of which the defendant might have been charged. Donahue v. Drown, 154 Mass. 21, 27 N.E. 675; Mooney v. Conn. River Lumber Co., 154 Mass. 407, 28 N.E. 325; Martineau v. National Blank Book Co., 166 Mass. 4, 43 N.E. 513; Packer v. Thompson-Houston Electric Co., 175 Mass. 496, 56 N.E. 704; O'Neil v. Ginn, 188 Mass. 346, 74 N.E. 668; Lynch v. M. T. Stevens Co., 187 Mass. 397, 73 N.E. 478; Fountaine v. Wampanoag Mills, 189 Mass. 498, 75 N.E. 738. But it is not necessary, in order to establish negligence of the defendant, that it should have had express notice of the precise irregularity, which resulted in the injury. It is enough if such circumstances appear as to render it likely that the harmful event would not have happened except for some act or omission amounting to a want of ordinary precaution. The mere starting of a machine, without the intervention of any human agency and when it should have remained at rest, is of itself evidence of some defective condition. To this extent the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur had been established. Gregory v. Am. Thread Co., 187 Mass. 239-242, 72 N.E. 962. See Coleman v. Mechanics' Iron Foundry Co., 168 Mass. 254, 46 N.E. 1065; White v. Boston & Albany R. R., 144 Mass. 404, 11 N.E. 552.
Here the machine had been in use many years, and the shaft had become so worn that it was necessary to substitute a new one, and there was some slight evidence that the adjustment of the new shaft to the old loom was made in such a manner that it might have been foreseen, by one familiar with the mechanism, that the belt was liable to work from the loose to the tight pulley. These circumstances, in connection with the fact of the starting of the machine, constituted not only evidence of a defective condition of the machine, but also that the defendant, in the exercise of due precaution, might have discovered the defect. Gregory v. Am. Thread Co., 187 Mass. 239, 72 N.E. 962; Connors v. Durite Mfg. Co., 156 Mass. 163, 30 N.E. 559. The defendant's first, fourth, sixth, and eighth requests for instructions were therefore properly refused.
Its ninth request, to the effect that, there being uncontradicted evidence that the loom was started by the act of a fellow servant, the plaintiff could not recover, ought not to have been given, for the reason that the jury may have disbelieved this testimony, even though uncontradicted. Lindenbaum v. N. Y., N.H. & H. R. R., 197 Mass. 314, 84 N.E. 129.
The defendant has strongly argued that there was error in that portion of the charge by which the jury were told: 'If you are not satisfied as to what was the specific cause of the starting of the loom, but do find as a fact that it did start suddenly from a position of rest when it had been properly stopped, you may consider that fact as evidence to show that there was some defective condition in the loom and some negligence in connection with that defective condition, even though you can't state specifically what the defective condition was.' This statement and various amplifications of it used by the trial court follow almost exactly the language which was held to be correct as applicable to similar facts in Byrne v. Boston Woven Hose Co., 191 Mass. 40, 77 N.E. 696. In that case, as in this, the machine had never before started of its own motion, but there it had broken...
To continue reading
Request your trial