Stutz v. Armour

• Decision Date: 11 April 1893
• Citation: 84 Wis. 623,54 N.W. 1000
• Parties: STUTZ v. ARMOUR ET AL.
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court

84 Wis. 623

54 N.W. 1000

STUTZ

v.ARMOUR ET AL.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

April 11, 1893.

Appeal from circuit court, Waukesha county; A. Scott Sloan, Judge.

Action by Mathias Stutz against Philip D. Armour, Jonathan C. Armour, and George H. Webster, doing business under the firm name and style of Armour & Co., for personal injuries. From a judgment of nonsuit, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

The other facts fully appear in the following statement by PINNEY, J.:

This is an action for the recovery of damages for personal injuries received by the plaintiff while in the employ of the defendants from a fall from a scaffold on the side of defendants' ice house, and caused by the negligence and improper direction of the defendants' foreman, Meinskee, under whose direction and with whom the plaintiff was working. The evidence was to the effect that the plaintiff and said foreman were at the time in question engaged in fixing a scaffolding about 22 feet high on the south side of defendants' ice house, and in arranging and adjusting some planks already placed on it, three in number, about 16 feet long, lying in a pile one above the other, and the space between the brackets upon which they rested was about 12 feet; the foreman desiring to move the lower plank so that it would project an equal distance over the bracket at each end of it. The foreman who was working with the plaintiff tipped the two upper planks over on their edges, so as to permit the lower one to be moved, and directed the appellant to move it to the east. When plaintiff attempted to so move the plank he was standing upon a wooden brace and iron rod towards the east end of the plank, and astride of it, looking eastward, and the foreman stood to his right and partially behind him, and so he could look to the westward, and when the foreman raised the two upper planks so as to enable the lower one to be moved, the plaintiff drew it along a short distance and stopped, when the foreman told him to move it a little further. He could not, from his position, see the west end of the plank, or how far it projected over the bracket, and he obeyed, moving the plank a short distance further, (not more than an inch, as he testified,) when the west end of the plank fell from the bracket on which it had rested to the ground, throwing the east end up, causing the plaintiff, who was astride of it, to fall from the scaffold to the ground, by which his collar bone was broken, and he sustained other...