Saunders v. The Coleridge

• Decision Date: 03 March 1896
• Citation: 72 F. 676
• Parties: THE COLERIDGE. v. THE COLERIDGE. SAUNDERS
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

72 F. 676

THE COLERIDGE.

SAUNDERS v. THE COLERIDGE.

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

March 3, 1896

Charles J. Patterson and John F. Clark, for libelant.

Edward L. Owen and George H. Gilman, for claimant.

BROWN District Judge.

In the afternoon of the 1st of February, 1894, while the libelant was engaged in making some repairs upon the tank in the hold of the steamship Coleridge, his foot was cut by the fall of a chopper belonging to the carpenter, who was at work on the tank upon a platform or scaffold 22 inches wide, and about 6 feet above the bottom of the tank. The wound was a somewhat serious one, and disabled the libelant for work for several months.

The libelant did not belong to the ship, but was in the employ of Mr. White, a boiler maker, by whom he had been sent to make preparation for putting a patch upon the tank. The carpenter belonged to the ship, and he was employed in repairing the tank by fitting some wooden casings about the place of the patch. The testimony is contradictory between the libelant and Luce, the carpenter, as to whether the libelant was at the time actually engaged in doing his own work upon the tank, or whether he was doing nothing about that work, but assisting the carpenter from time to time in passing the boards up and down in the course of fitting. The libelant testifies that at the time he was hit he was cleaning lead out of some holes in the place where the patch was to go on.

There is no evidence showing any imperfection or fault on the part of the ship, her tackle, or equipment, nor any fault on the part of the owners in employing a suitable person as carpenter. Nor is any fault or defect found with the platform, either in its kind, or the arrangements for using it; nor is there any evidence showing how the chopper came to fall off the platform. It was an ordinary tool, belonging to the carpenter. He had used it, as he says, about five minutes before the accident, in chopping off a piece of one of the boards, and had laid it down upon the platform a few feet from him. In what manner or why it got off the platform and fell is not known. The first the carpenter knew of its fall was when the libelant said he was hurt. It fell, presumably in consequence of some unexplained inadvertence on the part of the carpenter, either in stepping about on the platform or in handling the boards or other tools upon the platform. Inadvertence of that kind is an ordinary incident of such work, of which all workmen working on the same job, or working near each other, take the risk, as one of the risks of their vocation. Such cases are to be, moreover, regarded I think, as simple accidents rather than as legal negligence involving ship and owners in responsibility.

From what the carpenter testifies as to the position of the libelant when hurt, it would seem that the latter could not have been at work upon the holes, as he claims. For a part of the time certainly he was not occupied with his own separate work. From his previous work there, and his aid given to the carpenter, it is impossible also...