Shea v. Gurney
| Citation | 39 N.E. 996,163 Mass. 184 |
| Parties | SHEA v. GURNEY et al. |
| Decision Date | 01 March 1895 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
L.E. Chamberlain, for plaintiff.
Chas. H. Edson and Robert O. Harris, for defendants.
The plaintiff was not in the employ of the defendants. He was not induced, not invited, by them to enter their premises. He did not go there upon any matter of mutual interest to him or them, or upon any matter of business. He went there solely for his own amusement. At different times before the accident, he had assisted workmen, including the one whom he was helping when the injury occurred, under such circumstances that the jury would have been warranted in finding that he was doing it with the knowledge of one or both of the defendants. Once or twice, as the testimony tended to show, when about the premises, he had been directed by Mr. Slack to load some boxes. And in the same afternoon, shortly before the accident happened, the testimony tended to show that Mr. Slack saw the plaintiff helping to load slabs into a wagon, to be taken to the sawhouse. But as between the plaintiff and the defendants, notwithstanding these circumstances, he was, at the most, only a licensee and volunteer, who was supposed by them to visit the premises and to amuse himself by riding in the teams and by assisting the men; and, as such, the defendants owed him no duty, except to abstain from injuring him by active misconduct on their part. Zoebisch v. Tarbell, 10 Allen, 385, 386; Severy v. Nickerson, 120 Mass. 306; Johnson v. Railroad Co., 125 Mass. 75; Galligan v. Manufacturing Co., 143 Mass. 527, 10 N.E. 171; Reardon v. Thompson, 149 Mass. 267, 21 N.E. 369; Metcalfe v. Steamship Co., 147 Mass. 66, 16 N.E. 701; Daniels v. Railroad Co., 154 Mass. 349, 28 N.E. 283; Billows v. Moors (Mass.) 37 N.E. 750. We do not mean to intimate that the plaintiff was in the exercise of due care, even if he were to be regarded as the servant of the defendants. The direction by the workman Arsenal does not help the plaintiff. Flower v. Railroad Co., 69 Pa.St. 210; Railroad Co. v. Harrison, 48 Miss. 112; Howard v. Hood, 155 Mass. 391, 29 N.E. 630. Exceptions overruled.
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