Case ID: ny_232/html/0625-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Elsie Woerz, an Infant, by Heinrich Woerz, Her Guardian ad Litem, Appellant, v. Hattie Rosenfeld et al., Respondents, Impleaded with Another.
    
      Negligence — when child injured by fall of dumbwaiter while she was assisting her mother in work as janitress of building cannot recover against owners.
    
    
      Woerz v. Rosenfeld, 195 App. Div. 19, affirmed.
    (Argued January 20, 1922;
    decided February 3, 1922.)
    Appeal from a judgment, entered February 5, 1921, upon an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, reversing a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict and directing a dismissal of the complaint in an action to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff through 'the negligence of defendant. Plaintiff, a child nine years of age, was injured through the fall of a dumbwaiter she was manipulating in a building belonging to defendants. Her mother was janitress of the building in question. The evidence showed that the accident occurred while plaintiff, without the knowledge or consent of the defendants, was assisting her mother in the performance of her work as janitress. The Appellate Division held: “ The Labor Law (§§ 161, 162) forbids a child to work in connection with an apartment house. Besides, the mother in delegating her duties to the child acted outside of the scope of her janitorship. For such an unauthorized act on the part of the mother the principals cannot be held liable.”
    
      Thomas J. O’ Neill and Leonard F. Fish for appellant.
    
      William Dike Reed for respondents.
   Judgment affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: His cock, Ch. J., Hogan, Cardozo, Pound, McLaughlin, Crane and Andrews, JJ.