Case ID: nh_74/html/0276-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Young, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Hillsborough, )
    June 4, 1907.
    Klineintie v. Nashua Manufacturing Co.
    Where a servant seeks to recover for injuries resulting from an unsuitablecoadition of the premises due to ordinary wear or to the negligence of fellow-servants, it is incumbent upon him to prove his own ignorance of the defect complained of and that the master knew or ought to have known of it in season to have prevented the injury.
    Case, for personal injuries. Trial by jury. Transferred from tbe January term, 1907, of tbe superior court by Stone, J., upon the plaintiff’s exception to an order directing a verdict for the defendants.
    The plaintiff’s evidence tended to prove that she stepped on some oil which had been spilled on the floor of the room in which she worked, fell, and broke her arm. She was at the place of the accident forty-five minutes and again five minutes before she fell, and saw no oil on the floor at either time.
    
      Ivory O. Eaton, for the plaintiff.
    
      Burnham, Brown, Jones Warren, for the defendants.
   Young, J.

When the cause of the servant’s injury is a condition of the master’s instrumentalities produced either by ordinary wear or by the negligence of fellow-servants, he must show either that his master did and he did not know, or that his master was and he was not in fault for not knowing, of the defect in time to prevent the accident. St. Pierre v. Foster, ante, 4. In this case there is no evidence fi om which it can be found that the defendants either knew or ought to have known of the condition of the floor before the accident; consequently there is no evidence from which it can be found that they failed to perform any duty the relation of master and servant imposed on them for the plaintiff’s benefit.

Exception overruled.

All concurred.