Ryan v. Western Paper Box Co.
| Decision Date | 29 May 1911 |
| Citation | 137 S.W. 1008,156 Mo.App. 693 |
| Parties | MARY RYAN, Respondent, v. WESTERN PAPER BOX COMPANY, Appellant |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Jackson Circuit Court--Hon. Walter A. Powell, Judge.
Judgment reversed.
Warner Dean, McLeod & Timmonds and H. M. Langworthy for appellant.
George Horn for respondent.
Plaintiff's action is for damages occasioned by injuries which she received while in defendant's employ, caused as she alleges, by defendant's negligence. She recovered judgment in the circuit court.
Defendant, as its name indicates, was engaged in the manufacture of paper boxes. Plaintiff operated a machine called the "stayer" and she had extended experience in such service. The machine was used to clamp or paste pieces of glued paper, called "stays" on the corner of pasteboard boxes to fasten and hold them together. It consisted of an upper and lower die and was operated by belt and pulley, and it was so arranged that by pressure of a pedal, the upper die would descend against the lower one. When the upper die was lowered against the lower die, the stays or strips of glue paper are automatically fed and pasted on the box corners. If the operator presses the pedal with her foot and releases it immediately, the upper die will be lowered once only, but if she places her foot upon the pedal and holds it there, the head of the machine will continue to descend until the pedal is released. Plaintiff's left forefinger was injured by being caught between these dies.
The charge of negligence left in the case, after rulings made by the trial court, was that defendant failed to furnish "good and reasonably safe and sufficient appliances, tools or thimbles and machinery as defendant, by its foreman and superintendent, promised to do," with which plaintiff might perform her work. The particular appliances, as the evidence disclosed, were thimbles.
It appears that when plaintiff began to work for defendant, it furnished her with some steel thimbles or finger stalls for her forefingers, but they were too small and she did not use them; and that on the second day the foremen noticed it and asked her why she did not use them and she told him they were too small, and that he thereupon said he would get her some larger ones. He did not get her any others and she said nothing more about it, but continued to work until she was hurt, some two weeks afterwards.
Under the authority of Coin v. Lounge Co., 222 Mo. 488 121 S.W. 1, the evidence failed to make a case for plaintiff. In that case, as in this, there was no defect shown in the machine itself. In that case there was complaint that the "band saw" should be provided with a "gate or guard." That is, the complaint was not of a defective appliance in the machine which rendered it unsafe, but that there should be an additional appliance provided. There was a promise to provide it. The court, however,...
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