Tanguay v. Wood Conversion Co.
| Decision Date | 01 June 1964 |
| Citation | 199 N.E.2d 181,347 Mass. 530 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | Richard P. TANGUAY v. WOOD CONVERSION COMPANY et al. |
Joseph J. Walsh, Boston, for plaintiff.
Frederick H. Balboni, Brockton, for Robert J. Stalker, Inc.
William J. Fenton, Taunton, for Wood Conversion Co.
Before WILKINS, C. J., and SPALDING, WHITTEMORE, KIRK and REARDON, JJ.
The plaintiff, an employee of George A. Shurtleff & Son (Shurtleff), one of three consignees of a shipment of wood products, was injured when his foot went through a defective plank in the floor of the freight car which he had helped to unload at Middleborough on May 12, 1958. He brought this action of tort for negligence against Wood Conversion Company (Conversion), the shipper, which had loaded the car at Cloquet, Minnesota, and against Robert J. Stalker, Inc. (Stalker) of South Braintree, which had ordered the entire shipment and had designated the quantities to be shipped and the sequence of delivery to itself and the other two consignees of the load. The third consignee was Blacker & Holland Lumber Company (Blacker) of Norfolk Downs. At the close of the evidence, the judge directed verdicts for the defendants Conversion and Stalker. The case comes to us on the plaintiff's exceptions to these orders.
We test the correctness of the judge's action by summarizing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and by applying the familiar rule stated in Kelly v. Railway Exp. Agency, Inc., 315 Mass. 301, 302, 52 N.E.2d 411; Mazzaferro v. Dupuis, 321 Mass. 718, 719, 75 N.E.2d 503. The interior of the freight car was forty feet long and nine feet high. To protect the material shipped, Conversion covered the entire floor of the car with dunnage consisting of a single layer of abutting pieces of wallboard (a brittle wood product, too soft for flooring) which were one-half inch thick and four feet by eight feet in size. Pieces of the same material in various sizes were placed between cartons to brace the load and separate the shipments. The Stalker shipment (39,200 feet of material) took up the entire width and thirty of the forty feet of the length of the car and was four feet high. Blacker's shipment (7,500 feet of material) was placed on top of Stalker's near the door. Shurtleff's shipment (7,500 feet of material) occupied the remainder of the floor space at one end of the car. On April 16, 1958, Conversion sealed the car and it was hauled to Massachusetts. The first stop was at Norfolk Downs where the Blacker shipment was removed. When the car arrived at Stalker's premises in South Braintree on April 30, 1958, the doors were not sealed. Stalker had them sealed and they were kept sealed whenever the car was unattended on Stalker's premises. Stalker's shipment was unloaded in six hours on May 5, 1958. In the course of the unloading, Stalker's foreman, while walking over the layer of dunnage, felt the floor 'give' under his foot. He lifted the piece of dunnage which covered the area and observed a defective plank in the floor of the car. The plank was six inches wide and had an 'indentation' or 'depression' of about one inch which ran for a length of one and one-half feet from the edge of the door opening. The foreman thought the plank was unsound. He removed the piece of dunnage which covered the defective plank and substituted a steel plate. Upon completion of the unloading, the foreman removed the steel plate and sealed the doors of the car. He knew that the material remaining in the car was consigned to Shurtleff and would be unloaded by Shurtleff's employees in Middleborough. The car arrived there, with seals unbroken, on May 5, 1958. On May 12, 1958, Shurtleff's shipment was unloaded. When the seals were broken, the entire floor of the car was evenly covered with dunnage. The plaintiff assisted in the unloading. While the plaintiff was carrying an armful of dunnage to throw from the car, in accordance with a custom whereby the last consignee cleans out the car, he was injured. His foot went through the...
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...party introducing an adversary's answers to interrogatories which are not contradicted by other evidence, Tanguay v. Wood Conversion Co., 347 Mass. 530, 532-533, 199 N.E.2d 181 (1964).17 Radvilas testified that she had been doing the job of supervisor of the bulk area at night and that she ......
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Haley v. Allied Chemical Corp.
...the evidence under the rule stated in Kelly v. Railway Exp. Agency, Inc., 315 Mass. 301, 302, 52 N.E.2d 411; Tanguay v. Wood Conversion Co., 347 Mass. 530, 531, 199 N.E.2d 181. Almost all of the evidence came from witnesses called by the plaintiffs, including employees of Allied. Since Elec......