Case ID: ga_92/html/0497-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Brunner v. Black.
    Taking the evidence all together, it is manifest that the injury to the plaintiff below resulted from a defect in the elevator for which the owner was responsible, and that it was not incumbent on the plaintiff to notice the defect and to anticipate such a casualty as that which occurred. This being so, and the amount of the recovery being very small, it is not cause for a new trial that the court improperly charged the jury on the subject of rules for working the elevator and on the duty of the owner to prescribe rules or give proper orders for that purpose. There was no error in denying the requests for instructions, and the newly discovered •evidence, so far as material, might have become known by the use of due diligence before the trial. The court did not err in overruling the motion for a new trial.
    May 22, 1893.
    Action for damages. Before Judge Westmoreland’, City court of Atlanta. June term, 1892.
    The suit was for injuries received by the plaintiff while in the employment of defendant, because of the negligent leaving of a hole in the floor of an elevator, and improper management in running the same. The evidence was conflicting. It appeared for the plaintiff',, that he was inj ured on the day his employment commenced. Upon the order of Patten, another employee under whose direction he was working, he got upon the’ elevator with a truck load of flour in sacks, to be lowered to the ground floor of the building. One Nix lowered the elevator, and it went some inches below the-ground floor. The floor of the elevator was greasy, and there was a hole in it about two inches wide, of which hole plaintiff' was not aware. Into the hole the wheel of the truck slipped as plaintiff, by order of Patten, was endeavoring to pull the truck upon the floor, and the truck fell upon him and knocked him backwards, and his foot was caught between the floor and elevator and injured. He lost ten weeks from work, and had since been able to do but little, etc. He obtained a verdict for $50. Defendant’s motion for a new trial was overruled, and he excepted. The grounds of the motion were, that the verdict was contrary to law and evidence; that the court erred m charging the jury that “it was the duty of the defendant, if the running of the elevator was complicated, to have furnished or established rules for the working of the same ”; and that the court refused a request to charge, that if the plaintiff saw the hole or could have seen it, he could not recover because the truck wheel got into it, and if he was specially warned to stand still, and disobeyed the warning, and. by reason of want of attention his foot was caught, he coulcl not recover. There was also a ground of newly discovered evidence, but it is not material here.
   Judgment affirmed.

Haygood, Lovett & Plyer, for plaintiff in error.

Thomas W. Latham, contra.