Taylor v. Reading Co., Civ. A. No. 5362.
| Citation | 83 F. Supp. 804 |
| Decision Date | 14 February 1949 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 5362. |
| Parties | TAYLOR v. READING CO. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
Harry R. Kozart and Nathan Kessler, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff.
Henry R. Heebner, of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.
David Taylor was killed as the result of injuries sustained by him while he was operating a crane in the course of his employment. In an action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act1, the jury, after the defendant offered no evidence on its side of the case, returned a general verdict in favor of the plaintiff, executor of the estate of the deceased. Defendant has moved to set aside the verdict and judgment entered thereon and to have judgment entered in accordance with its motion for a directed verdict. The reason given therefor is that the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, could not support a finding of negligence on its part.
On April 25, 1945, at Port Richmond, Philadelphia, the deceased, an experienced crane operator, was removing ore from a gondola car to a hopper of the National Carbon Company located alongside a railroad trestle. The transfer of the ore was accomplished by means of a twenty year old railroad steam locomotive crane which he operated with the assistance of a fireman. It was the latter's main job to see to it that sufficient steam pressure was maintained in the boiler of the crane and to apply, when necessary, the hand brake on the gondola car. The body of the crane rotated upon a twenty-four by eight foot flat car. It supplied its own steam power both for loading and unloading operations and locomotion. Its bucket, of the clam shell variety, was suspended from the boom, fifty feet in length, by means of two steel cables which passed over the top of the boom and ran down to and around revolving drums similar to those in a winch. The boom could be hoisted and lowered between the horizontal and perpendicular positions only in a vertical plane. The operator and the fireman on the crane were protected by a housing structure; the drums, with the exception of the friction blocks, which were partly shielded by fenders, were exposed to the weather. The friction blocks, when properly worked by a hand lever by the operator, squeezed around or gripped the drums. Revolving motion could not be transmitted to the drums unless the friction blocks gripped them properly. Water between the friction blocks and the drums would hamper this gripping process.
Despite the fact that it was raining heavily that day, the deceased and the fireman continued to work. They were not instructed to stop working during rainy weather. With the aid of the crane's locomotive power, a gondola car, after it had been filled with manganese ore, was moved to a convenient position along the railroad trestle. At that position, the ore in the car could be picked up by the crane's bucket, swung through almost a semi-circle and dropped into the hopper. Until about 2:30 in the afternoon, no difficulty had been encountered in the operation of the crane. At that time, when the rain was coming down in torrents, the crane, during one of its rotating swings from the gondola car to the hopper with a filled bucket of ore, toppled over on its side in the direction in which the boom and bucket were swung, trapping the deceased in the wreckage. Steam escaping from the broken pipes of the crane scalded him severely. He died several hours later. The fireman escaped injury by leaping from the crane when his sense of equilibrium warned him that it was becoming unbalanced. Except to the extent that the fireman may be considered as such, there were no eyewitnesses to the accident. Prior to its toppling over, the crane did not strike any object, nor was there, as far as the fireman could discern, any unusual jerking motion in its operation.
The deceased was the only person in charge of the movements of the crane and it was his responsibility for setting the boom at the proper angle, depending upon the weight of the load to be carried. Defendant relied upon his skill and judgment with...
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