Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-08-18
YORK COUNTY CASE.
Operative Assumes Risk by Under.
standingly Conserving to Conditions.


The law court handed down a re-
script Tuesday in the York county case
of Lewanna Wiley VS.. Joshua G. Bach
elder in which the court rules that the
danger incident to the operation of an
unguarded ironing mangle was so fully
understood by the plaintiff that she
must be deemed to have assumed the
risk of employment. The rescript is
as follows:
Lewanna Wiley, VS.. Joshua G. Bach
elder.
Rescript by Whitehouse, J.
The plaintiff was employed as an OPP
erative in the defendants steam laun-
dry at Sanford and while engaged in
running table cloth through an iron
ing mangle received a severe injury
to her left hand resulting in the am
putation Of the first and second fingers.
This ironing machine, known as a ter
nary mangle, consisted of a steam
heated drum or cylinder about Is inches
in diameter over which were three
smaller cylinders or rollers about eight
inches in diameter padded with cloth.
In front of the heated drum and about
half an inch from it, was a board
about foot wide called an apron or
feed board. The small rollers above
were so close to the heated drum that
table cloth placed upon the apron
against the revolving drum would he
carried up and gripped between the
drum and the small rollers and dried
and smoothed as it was carried
through. 1t was the duty of the opera
tive to keep it smooth by holding it
on the feed board and in some instances
to retain her hold upon the corners of
it until it was within an inch of the
point of contact with the upper rollers.
This mangle had been used by the
defendant and his predecessors in the
same laundry for more than three
years prior to the accident without any
guard rail or protection bar to prevent
the hands of the operative from being
caught between the cylinders. Indeed
Il appears from the evidence introduced
by the plaintiff that the work which
this machine was designed to perform
could be more easily and rapidly done
without any guard rail or protecting
rod. and that this method of operating
1t was accordingly preferred by the
operatives as well as by the proprietors
1t was the primary duty of the de-
PENDANT to use ordinary care to pro-
vide and maintain reasonably safe and
suitable machinery for the plaintiff to
operate, so that by the exercise Of due
care on her own part, the plaintiff
could perform the service required of
her without liability to other injuries
than those resulting from simple and
accidents. But the rule
is now equally familiar and we'll set
tied at common law that if an opera
tive continues in the service of his en-
ployer after he has knowledge of the
condition of any machinery
in connection with which he is re-
nuired to labor, and it appears that
he fully understands and appreciates
the nature and extent of the perils to
which he is thereby exposed, he will
be deemed to have waived the perform
ance of the employers obligation to
provide suitable guards, protecting rods
and hoods for dangerous machines and
to have assumed the risks of an employ
mont of which he has thus voluntarily
and intelligently consented. If the OBJ
erative does not ask for further safe
guards or otherwise so conducts him.
self as to assure his employer that he
IS content with the machinery and APP
pllances as they are, and will himself
take the chance of injury, he cannot
after an injury transfer the risk to his
employer. If the operator appreciates
and understands the risk and contin-
ues to work on the machine without
to the want of a guard, the
fact that the machine might have been
safer with a guard is immaterial."