Sweet v. Ohio Coal Co.

• Decision Date: 25 November 1890
• Citation: 78 Wis. 127,47 N.W. 182
• Parties: SWEET v. OHIO COAL CO.
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court

78 Wis. 127

47 N.W. 182

SWEET

v.OHIO COAL CO.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Nov. 25, 1890.

Appeal from circuit court, Ashland county; J. K. PARISH, Judge.Dufur & Tannehill and F. W. Houghton, for appellant.

Dockery & Kingston and Hayden & Young, for respondent.

COLE, C. J.

This is an action to recover damages for a personal injury caused, as it is alleged, by the negligence of the defendant company. There is no dispute about the facts, which may be briefly stated as follows: The plaintiff was in the employ of the defendant from the 20th day of May until the 24th day of August, 1889, on its coal docks in Ashland. His usual work was to assist in shoving the railroad cars as the coal was put into them, and keeping the dock clear so that the cars could be shoved easier. There was a kind of tramway or upper dock about 25 feet above the lower dock on which the plaintiff worked, upon which upper dock there were three or four men employed. About the 1st of August, a stairway was built from the lower to the upper dock. This stairway was about 3 feet wide, and 27 feet long. Two long planks were used for stringers. Into the sides of the stringers, notches were sawed, and planks laid in and nailed. The steps were of irregular distances apart, being from 12 5/8 inches to 18 1/4 inches. The stairway was quite steep, and had no railing on the sides. The plaintiff testified that he was called upon to go up and down the stairs for different purposes; that he went up once carrying drinking water to the men at work on the upper dock, and once to assist in changing the cars from one track to another; but he had come down the stairs only once prior to the injury. On the day of the accident, the men on the upper dock called for drinking water, and the plaintiff took a pail of water up the stairway to them. He says: “I set down the pail at the head of the stairs, and started to go down, and, as I stepped from the third to the fourth step from the top, my leg struck on the step above that I was stepping from, and consequently threw it out. The calf of my leg struck somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen inches from my foot. It threw the foot off the step, and consequently I pitched forward and fell down to the main dock, about twenty-two or twenty-three feet.” That he sustained a serious injury from the fall is not disputed. The only act of negligence on the part of the defendant upon which responsibility for the injury is predicated is the construction of such a steep stairway without proper braces or a railing, with the steps so far apart and of irregular distances, which stairway was intended to be used by men employed on the dock. It is said, the stairway was defectively constructed, and was very dangerous. That the stairway was defectively made; that it was dangerous; that the defendant company knew that it was not well constructed, and was dangerous,--are facts which must be deemed established on this appeal from the ruling of the trial court directing a verdict for the defendant. And the question is, do these facts show that the defendant is liable for the injury? It appears to us they do not. The stairway was uncovered, exposed to...