Trim v. Fore River Ship Bldg. Co.
| Decision Date | 22 May 1912 |
| Citation | 98 N.E. 591,211 Mass. 593 |
| Parties | TRIM v. FORE RIVER SHIP BLDG. CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Dallinger & Stearns F. W. Dallinger, and T. W. Cunningham, all of Boston, for plaintiff.
John & James A. Lowell, of Boston, for defendant.
DE COURCY, J.
The plaintiff, as administratrix, seeks to recover damages for the conscious suffering and death of her husband James W Trim, an employé of the defendant, who was injured while working near the bottom of the boiler room hatch of an uncompleted vessel. This hatchway was wholly sheathed in forming a casing for the smoke stack, and was open at the top. Trim was killed by an angle iron, one hundred and five pounds in weight, falling on him from above.
The defendant concedes that the deceased was in the exercise of due care, and that he did not assume the risk; but it contends that the plaintiff has not sustained the burden of proving that the injury was caused by any negligence on its own part or on that of any person for whose negligence it is legally responsible. There was no testimony showing where the angle iron was before it came down. So far as the evidence disclosed it was not to be used in the defendant's work and the general foreman testified that he had been unable to find out why it was on the vessel.
In the absence of any proof as to what caused the iron to fall upon the deceased, the plaintiff invokes the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, contending that the mere occurrence of the injury raises a presumption of culpability on the part of the defendant. Undoubtedly there are instances where the proof of negligence sufficient to make out a prima facie case may be supplied by a presumption that arises from the occurrence of the injury. But in such cases it must appear that the instrumentality which inflicted the injury was in the control of the defendant, subject to his use and inspection, and also that the accident was one which in the ordinary experience of mankind would not have happened unless from the negligence of the defendant or that of others for whose negligence he is legally responsible. Where the injury might well have resulted from any one of many causes, the plaintiff, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, must exclude the operation of those causes for which the defendant is under no legal obligation. Carter v. Boston & Albany Railroad, 177 Mass. 228, 58 N.E. 694; Hofnauer v. R....
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