Wallsend Coal & Coke Co. v. Shields' Adm'r

• Decision Date: 19 June 1914
• Parties: WALLSEND COAL & COKE CO. v. SHIELDS' ADM'R.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

167 S.W. 918

159 Ky. 644

WALLSEND COAL & COKE CO. v. SHIELDS' ADM'R.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

June 19, 1914

Appeal from Circuit Court, Bell County.

Action by Hiram Shield's Administrator against the Wallsend Coal & Coke Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Sampson & Sampson, of Middlesboro, and Logan & Babbage, of Pineville for appellant.

H. H Ingersoll and N. J. Weller, both of Pineville, for appellee.

CLAY C.

Hiram Shields, while employed in a mine owned and operated by the Wallsend Coal & Coke Company, was struck by a falling rock and so severely injured that he died in a few months. In this action for damages, his administrator recovered a verdict and judgment against the Wallsend Coal & Coke Company in the sum of $7,000. The defendant appeals.

The accident occurred under the following circumstances: Shields was about 30 years of age. Besides other experience in and around mines, he had been a practical coal miner for about five years. Defendant's mine No. 1 had been worked out some time prior to July 20, 1910, the day on which the accident occurred. Prior to the accident, Shields had but just completed the pulling of a pillar. He applied to defendant's mine boss for another place to work. At that time the tenth right entry in the mine had been mined out. There remained a stump on the right side of the tenth right entry at the corner where that entry turned off from the third main entry. The stump ran along the entry for about 100 feet, and extended back about 40 feet. It consisted of a solid mass of coal. The room neck, which constituted a passage from the entry to the back of the stump, was stopped up by slate, and it was not practicable to mine it from that side. Shields began mining from the far corner of the stump and worked some five or six days, during which time he took out a large quantity of coal. In doing this work he mined along the rib of the entry for several feet, and back for a distance of several feet. At the point where Shields was injured, there was a curve in the entry, and the rock and slate bulged out for a short distance. Shields and his stepson, Delbert Broughton, were working together. The track in the entry was about two feet from the side of the entry. Shields started to the entry to get some oil. As he stepped into the entry, he was struck by a large rock about 20 or 23 inches long, and so injured that he subsequently died. Exactly how far this rock projected into the entry does not clearly appear, but it is evident that a portion of it so projected, and that the remainder of it was above the coal which had been previously mined out by Shields. Shields and Broughton claim that Shields was in the entry when he was struck, though several witnesses claim that the rock fell outside of the entry, and within the stump. From his position, however, it is reasonably clear that a part of it fell within the entry and part of it within the stump.

For defendant there was evidence to the effect that the bank boss told Shields to go to the center of the stump and cut a narrow passage entirely through it, and then mine the coal from the back. Shields,...