Stamper v. Hammond Packing Co.

• Decision Date: 01 November 1915
• Docket Number: No. 11722.,11722.
• Parties: STAMPER v. HAMMOND PACKING CO.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

180 S.W. 1074

STAMPER v. HAMMOND PACKING CO.

No. 11722.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

November 1, 1915.

Rehearing Denied December 18, 1915.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Buchanan County; Chas. H. Mayer, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Action by Thomas F. Stamper against the Hammond Packing Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Samuel I. Motter and O. E. Shultz, both of St. Joseph, for appellant. Myttor. & Parkinson, of St. Joseph, for respondent.

JOHNSON, J.

This is a suit for damages for personal injuries plaintiff received while in the service of defendant as oiler in the engine room of defendant's meat-packing plant in St. Joseph. Negligence in maintaining a Corliss engine, used to operate tie machinery for manufacturing ice, in a defective and dangerous state of repair, is pleaded in the petition as the cause of action. Defendant answered with a general denial a ad pleas of assumed risk and contributory negligence. The verdict was for plaintiff in the sum of 82,125, and, after its motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were overruled, defendant appealed.

With the exception of a brief interval, plaintiff had been employed at defendant's packing house in various capacities for a period of about six years preceding his injury, which occurred about 1:30 a. m. March 30 1914. He had not been assigned to the position of oiler until that night, but in the services he had been rendering had spent much of his time in the engine room, and occasionally, but not frequently, had oiled the engine which injured him. His evidence tends to show that for more than a year this engine had been in a defective and dangerous condition. A hook, or catch, which worked up and down, alternately lifted and dropped the dashpot, a part of a mechanism which opened and closed the valves of the two cylinders with which the engine was equipped. In engaging the dashpot rod the hook was brought into contact with a steel block and held in place by the pressure of a spring. A year or more before the date of the injury plaintiff had observed that the spring had become weakened and would not always hold the hook in place, and shortly after going to work as oiler on the night of the injury he noticed that the spring had not been repaired, and discoverd that the hook sometimes would slip, cawing an intermission in the valvular action. He called the attention of his foreman, the night engineer, to the defects in the spring, hook, and block, and was told that when the hook "wouldn't pick up that way to place my hand on the hook and hold it and then it would catch up." Further, the engineer told plaintiff that he would attend to having the defects repaired. Plaintiff testified:

"At about 1:30 I noticed the machine was losing out and wasn't picking up. I walked around and placed my hand on the book just like he [the engineer] showed me, with my left hand, * * * and it jarred my hand off, and the hook come down and broke those two fingers."

Defendant introduced no evidence, except a written statement signed by plaintiff shortly after the injury, in which appears the following narrative:

"I noticed that the small ice machine had a slug of water in the high-pressure cylinder and was failing to pick up. Under these conditions the latches will not pick up the blocks, and the method used to correct this is for some one to hold the latches down, thus compelling them to continue their work until the water in the cylinder is taken care of, and the latches then resume their work without assistance."

Plaintiff was recalled to the stand, and testified that this statement was prepared by the claim agent, and was signed by plaintiff without being read. In answer to a question asked by counsel for defendant he said the statement was true, but from all his testimony on that subject it is evident that he was not meaning to be understood as saying that the slipping of the hook in this or other instances was caused by the collection of water in the cylinder. He maintained throughout his testimony that the slipping was caused by the worn condition of the spring, hook, and block; e. g.:

"I showed him [the engineer] that it was worn so bad that it wouldn't pick up the dashpot. * * * He told me that when it wouldn't pick up that way to place my hand on the hook and hold it, and then it would pick up."

The petition alleges:

"That for a long time prior to the 30th day of March, 1914, the defendant maintained the ice machine No. 2 with the steam hooks and...