Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/116/642/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 06:50:42+00:00

Document:
When the allowance of a challenge to a juror for cause is assigned as error, it should appear that it was not peremptory if peremptory challenges are allowed.
An allowance of a challenge to a juror for cause and the selection of another competent and unbiased juror in his place works no prejudice to the other party.
It is not error that the court below, after motion to set aside a verdict as excessive, ordered that the motion should be granted unless the plaintiff should at once remit the amount deemed by the court to be in excess, but in that case the motion should be denied and judgment entered for the remainder.
An employer is not liable for injuries to his servant caused by the negligence of a fellow servant in a common employment, but this exemption does not extend to injuries caused by the carelessness or neglect of another person in the master's service in an employment not common to that in which the person injured is engaged, and upon a subject in regard to which the person injured has a right to look for care and diligence on the part of the other person as the representative of the common master.
If no one is appointed by a railway company to look after the condition of its cars and see that the machinery and appliances used to move and to stop them are kept in repair and in good working order, it is liable for the injuries caused thereby. If one is appointed by it charged with that duty, and the injuries result from his negligence in its performance, the company is liable. He is, so far as that duty is concerned, the representative of the company.
"An employer is not bound to indemnify his employee for losses suffered by the latter in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed, nor in consequence of the negligence of another person employed in the same general business"
does not apply to losses suffered by an employee in consequence of the negligence of another person employed by the same employer in another and not in the same general business.
A statute which provides that "there is no common law in any case where the law is declared by the codes" does not take from the court the duty of referring to the common law in order to determine the meaning of a term used in the codes when they fail to define it.
a telegraph line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. In 1879, it had constructed and was operating the road from Duluth, in Minnesota, to Bismarck, in Dakota. On the 24th of October of that year, the plaintiff in the court below, the defendant in error here, was a brakeman in its yard at Bismarck, where its cars were switched upon different tracks and its trains were made up for the road. It was his duty, among other things, to set and to loosen the brakes of the cars whenever necessary and whenever ordered to do so by the yardmaster. At the time mentioned, he was ordered to stop, with the brakes, two cars which had been switched upon a track in the yard. In obedience to this order, he went upon the rear car and attempted to set the brake attached to it, but the brake was so badly broken and out of order that it could not be made to work. As soon as he discovered this, he stepped on the forward car in order to stop it. The brake on that car was a "step-brake," and in order to work it, he was obliged to place his foot on the step attached to the car below the top, and this brought his foot and leg between the two cars. This brake was also out of order, and while attempting to set it, his foot being upon the step, the car struck another car on the track, and was suddenly stopped. The draw bar and bumper of the rear car had been pulled out, and for want of them the two cars, when the forward one was suddenly stopped, came violently together, crushing his leg, so that amputation became necessary. To recover damages for the injury sustained, he brought this action against the company, alleging that it was its duty to provide good and safe cars and machinery and apparatus of a like character for braking and handling them, and also to make rules and regulations for switching and handling them in they yard and for notifying employees of the condition of defective and broken cars so that they might not be subjected to unnecessary danger, but that it neglected its duty in these particulars, and thereby, without his fault, he was injured as stated.
leg between them when setting the brake of the forward car, and thus, through his own fault, suffered the injury of which he complains.
There was a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $25,000. A motion for a new trial was made on various grounds; among others, that the damages were excessive. The court ordered that a new trial be granted unless he remitted $15,000 of the verdict, and in case he did so that the motion be denied. He remitted the amount, and judgment was entered in his favor for the balance, and costs of suit, which the supreme court of the territory affirmed.
For the reversal of the judgment several errors of the court below are assigned, but, so far as they are deemed material, they may be reduced to four: 1, in sustaining a challenge to a juror, 2, in denying a new trial on condition that the plaintiff should remit a part of the sum awarded by the verdict, 3, in refusing to dismiss the suit at the close of the plaintiff's case, 4, in refusing to charge that the plaintiff should have taken notice of the defects in the cars, and that he was guilty of such negligence in that respect as to deprive him of a right to recover.
1. As to the challenge to a juror. It appears that one Weaver, summoned as a juror, testified that he was a lumber dealer and that the company gave him a place on its right of way for a lumber yard, without rent, and also that he had heard the accident to the plaintiff spoken of and explained. It was not shown, however, that the had any actual bias for or against either party or any belief or opinion touching the merits of the case. He was nevertheless challenged, and the allowance of the challenge constitutes the first error assigned. It does not appear whether the challenge was for cause or was peremptory. Under the statute of Dakota, each party is entitled to three peremptory challenges. It is for the party asserting error to show it; it will not be assumed. But if we regard the challenge as for cause, its allowance did not prejudice the company. A competent and unbiased juror was selected and sworn, and the company had therefore a trial by an impartial jury, which was all it could demand. United States v. Cornell, 2 Mason 104; Heaston v. Cincinnati & Fort Wayne Railroad Co., 16 Ind. 275, 279; Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Co. v. Franklin, 23 Kan. 74; Carpenter v. Dame, 10 Ind. 130; Morrison v. Lovejoy, 6 Minn. 349, 350.
of what was deemed excessive, it did nothing more than require the relinquishment of so much of the damages as in its opinion the jury had improperly awarded. The corrected verdict could therefore be properly allowed to stand. Hayden v. Florence Sewing Machine Co., 54 N.Y. 221, 225; Doyle v. Dixon, 97 Mass. 208, 213; Blunt v. Little, 3 Mason 102, 107.
3. The dismissal of the suit at the close of the plaintiff's case was moved on the ground that the plaintiff had failed to establish a cause of action, and in support of this position it is contended that the plaintiff was a fellow servant of the officer or agent of the company who was charged with the duty of keeping the cars in order, and therefore could not recover against the company for injuries suffered by reason of the latter's negligence, and that this exemption from liability is declared by the statute of Dakota. The general doctrine as to the exemption of an employer from liability for injuries to a servant caused by the negligence of a fellow servant in a common employment is well settled. When several persons are thus employed, there is necessarily incident to the service of each the risk that the others may fail in that care and vigilance which are essential to his safety. In undertaking the service, he assumes that risk, and, if he should suffer, be cannot recover from his employer. He is supposed to have taken it into consideration when he arranged for his compensation. As we said on a former occasion: "He cannot, in reason, complain if he suffers from a risk which he has voluntarily assumed, and for the assumption of which he is paid." Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad Co. v. Ross, 112 U. S. 377, 112 U. S. 383.
"cannot, in respect to such matters, interpose between it and the servant, who has been injured without fault on his part, the personal responsibility of an agent, who, in exercising the master's authority, has violated the duty he owes as well to the servant as to the corporation."
In that case, the engine of the railroad, coming in contact with an animal, was thrown from the track over an embankment, whereby the whistle fastened to the boiler was forced out, thus permitting hot water and steam to escape which so scalded the engineer as to cause his death. The engine was thrown from the track because the cow-catcher or pilot was defective, and the whistle was forced out because it was insecurely fastened. These defects were owing to the negligence of the company's master mechanic and the foreman of the roundhouse, to whom was committed the exclusive management of the motive power of the company, with control over all the engineers employed. In an action by the widow and child of the deceased, the company set up as a defense that if the alleged defects existed, which it denied, they were owing to the negligence of those servants, for which the company was not liable. The Court held that the company was not thereby exonerated from liability.
was held by the Court of Appeals of New York that a corporation is liable to an employee for negligence or want or proper care in respect of such acts and duties as it was required to perform as master or principal, without regard to the rank or title of the agent entrusted with their performance, and that as to such acts, the agent occupies the place of the corporation, and that the latter is deemed to be present, and consequently liable for the manner in which they are performed. There, it appeared that the accident which caused the injury complained of was in consequence of an insufficient of brakemen on the cars of the company. The fact that the company had an agent whose business it was to make up the trains, to hire and station the brakemen, and to prepare and dispatch the trains did not relieve it from liability.
"which a master or principal is bound as such to perform toward his employees, if he delegates the performance of them to an agent, the agent occupies the place of the master, and the latter is deemed present and liable for the manner in which they are performed."
affirmed the principle of the decisions already cited, and held that an act or duty which the master, as such, is bound to perform for the safety and protection of his employees cannot be delegated so as to relieve him from liability to a servant injured by its omission or its negligent performance, whether the nonfeasance or misfeasance be that of a superior or inferior officer, agent, or servant to whom the doing of the act or the performance of the duty has been committed. "In either case, in respect to such act or duty," said the court, "the servant who undertakes or omits to perform it is the representative of the master and not a mere co-servant with the one who sustains the injury." Pantzar v. Tilly Foster Iron Mining Co., 99 N.Y. 368, decided the present year by that court, is to the same effect.
"the agents who are charged with the duty of supplying safe machinery are not, in the true sense of the rule relied on, to be regarded as fellow servants of those who are engaged in operating it. They are charged with a master's duty to his servant. They are employed in distinct and independent departments of service, and there is no difficulty in distinguishing them, even when the same person renders service by turns in each, as the convenience of the employer may require. In one, the master cannot escape the consequence of the agent's negligence; if the servant is injured in the other, he may."
whether the corporation in any part of its organization, by any of its agents, or for want of agents, failed to exercise due care to prevent injury to the plaintiff from defects in the instrument furnished for his use."
"that the person whose duty it was to keep the machinery in order, so far as that duty goes, was not, in any legal sense, the fellow servant of the plaintiff. To provide machinery and keep it in repair and to use it for the purpose for which it was intended are very distinct matters. They are not employments in the same common business, tending to the same common result. The one can properly be said to begin only when the other ends. The two persons may indeed work under the same master and receive their pay from the same source, but this is not sufficient. They must be at the time engaged in a common purpose or employed in the same general business. We do not now refer to the different grades of services, about which there is considerable conflict of opinion, but of the different employment. In the repair of the machinery, the servant represented the master in the performance of his part of the contract, and therefore, in the language of the instructions, his negligence in that respect is the 'omission of the master or employer in contemplation of law.'"
defect in the machinery may be followed by serious disasters. The same considerations which render him responsible in such cases for the safe transportation of passengers and property should also impose upon him an equal responsibility to his employees so far as their safety depends upon the character and condition of the machinery and appliances used in the transportation. Where the employee is not guilty of contributory negligence, no irresponsibility should be admitted for an injury to him caused by the defective condition of the machinery and instruments with which he is required to work, except it could not have been known nor guarded against by proper care and vigilance on the part of his employer.
According to the authorities cited, there can be no question as to the liability of the railroad company to the plaintiff for the injuries he sustained. If no one was appointed by the company to look after the condition of the cars and see that the machinery and appliances used to move and to stop them were kept in repair and in good working order, its liability for the injuries would not be the subject of contention. Its negligence in that case would have been in the highest degree culpable. If, however, one was appointed by it charged with that duty and the injuries resulted from his negligence in its performance, the company is liable. He was, so far as that duty is concerned, the representative of the company. His negligence was its negligence, and imposed a liability upon it unless, as contended, it was relieved therefrom by the statute of Dakota.
"CO-EMPLOYEES. An employer is not bound to indemnify his employee for losses suffered by the latter in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed, nor in consequence of the negligence of another person employed by the same employer in the same general business, unless he has neglected to use ordinary care in the selection of the culpable employee."
indemnify his employee for losses caused by the former's want of ordinary care."
held, against the contention of the company, that the superintendent was not a fellow employee of the deceased in the sense intended by the section; that for the purposes of managing the business and determining what machinery should be used and how placed, he was the representative of the company, and that the deceased was not bound to know whether a defect existed in the machinery and appliances not within his view, but had a right to rely upon the implied engagement of the company that the pipe was properly placed and constructed. It was also held that the tinner, in performing his share of the work, was not a fellow servant of the deceased; that as his work was done under the direction and supervision of the superintendent, it was the same as if done by the superintendent in person.
We do not perceive that the provision of the sixth section of the Civil Code of Dakota, that in the territory "there is no common law in any case where the law is declared by the Codes," at all affects the question before us. There cannot be two rules of law on the same subject contradicting each other; therefore, where the Code declares the law, there can be no occasion to look further; but where the Code is silent, the common law prevails. What constitutes the "same general business" is not defined by the Code, but may be explained by adjudged cases. The declaration by the Code of a general rule, which is conformable to existing law, does not prevent the courts from looking to those cases for explanation any more than it prevents them from looking into the dictionary for the meaning of words.
who had control of them while in the yard, and might have been ascertained, upon proper inspection, by the officer or agent of the company charged with the duty of keeping them in repair, yet nothing was done to repair either brakes or cars. Under these circumstances, it cannot be said that the company exercised, through its officer or agent charged with that duty, ordinary care to keep the cars and brakes in good condition, and therefore, under the provisions of this section, it is bound to indemnify the plaintiff.
4. As to the alleged negligence of the plaintiff, only a few words need be said. Of course he was bound to exercise care to avoid injuries to himself. If he had known, or might have known by ordinary attention, the condition of the brakes and cars when he mounted the cars and thus exposed himself to danger -- in other words, if he did not use his senses as men generally use theirs to keep from harm -- he cannot complain of the injury which he suffered. He had been employed in the yard only one day before the accident occurred, and it does not appear that the defects in the brakes or cars were brought to his notice, though there was some evidence that statements as to their defective condition were made in his presence and hearing. He testifies that he saw no defect in either of them, and was not apprised of any. The defect in the brakes was not patent to the eye; it could be known only from an attempt to set them or by information from others. He had a right, therefore, to assume, without such information, that they were in a condition in which it was safe to mount the cars to set them when ordered by the yardmaster.
bound to take care not to expose his person to injuries which a broken and defective car might cause, and further that if they found from the evidence that the company was guilty of negligence in not providing proper and safe machinery and appliances, in consequence of which neglect the injury was received, still, if he failed to exercise that prudence, care, and caution which prudent men under similar circumstances would ordinarily exercise, and he thereby contributed approximately to injury, he was not entitled to recover.
I concur in the opinion just delivered by MR. JUSTICE FIELD, and will add a few suggestions in support of the conclusion reached by the Court. It is contended on behalf of the railroad company that if it used ordinary care in the selection of the employee to whose negligence the plaintiff's injuries are attributed, it is protected from liability by § 1130 of the Dakota Code, even if such culpable employee had superior or controlling authority over the injured employee and even if the injuries were caused by the defective condition of the appliances and machinery provided by the company through its agents for the use of the employee so injured, for, it is argued, the words "the same general business" in that section embrace every branch or department of the common employer's business, and no distinction is therein made between employees in respect of grades or the nature of the particular service rendered by them. Even if that were admitted to be a proper construction of § 1130, standing by itself, the inquiry still arises as to the object of § 1131, which declares that the employer "must, in all cases, indemnify his employee for losses caused by the former's want of ordinary care." The latter section was plainly intended to cover cases not provided for in the preceding section.
"for losses suffered by the latter in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed, nor in consequence of the negligence of another person employed by the same employer in the same general business,"
it also with equal distinctness declares two exceptions to that rule: 1, where the employer has neglected to use ordinary care in the selection of the employee whose negligence caused the losses in question; 2, where the losses were caused by the employer's own want of ordinary care. The latter exception is as explicitly declared as is the former, and cannot be ignored or nullified by construction.
What case is more distinctly within § 1131 than one where a railroad company fails to appoint some one to provide and maintain machinery and appliances safe and suitable for use by its employees, or where its agent or employee, appointed to that duty, does not exercise ordinary care in its discharge? Such an agent or employee is of necessity the representative of the corporation, and his want of ordinary care in respect of such matters is negligence upon the part of the corporation itself. It cannot in reference to those matters, whatever it may be permitted to do in reference to other matters connected with its business, "interpose between it and the servant who has been injured, without fault on his part, the personal responsibility of an agent." That is clearly shown in the opinion of the Court. Between an agent charged with the performance of the company's duty to provide and maintain safe and suitable appliances and machinery and the employees who use them, the relation of fellow servants does not exist. The want of ordinary care upon his part is, in the language of § 1131 and according to the weight of judicial authority, a want of ordinary care upon the part of the corporation itself. This case therefore comes within that section.
BRADLEY, MR. JUSTICE MATTHEWS, and MR. JUSTICE GRAY, dissenting.
MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, MR. JUSTICE MATTHEWS, MR. JUSTICE GRAY, and myself are unable to concur in the judgment of the Court in this case.
"SEC. 6. In this territory there is no common law in any case where the law is declared by the Codes."
"SEC. 2129. The rule of the common law that statutes in derogation thereof are to be strictly construed has no application to this Code. This Code establishes the law of this territory respecting the subjects to which it relates, and its provisions are to be liberally construed with a view to effect its objects and to promote justice."
"SEC. 1129. An employer must indemnify his employee, except as prescribed in the next section, for all that he necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of his duties as such, or of his obedience to the directions of the employer, even though unlawful, unless the employee at the time of obeying such directions, believed them to be unlawful."
"SEC. 1130. An employer is not bound to indemnify his employee for losses suffered by the latter in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed, nor in consequence of the negligence of another person employed by the same employer in the same general business, unless he has neglected to use ordinary care in the selection of the culpable employee."
"SEC. 1131. An employer must in all cases indemnify his employee for losses caused by the former's want of ordinary care."
"the negligence of those entrusted by the corporation with the power and duty of procuring or keeping in repair such machinery is, in law, the negligence of the corporation."
case provided for by § 1130, and the doctrine of the Court comes to this in Dakota: that even though a railroad corporation, acting by its board of directors, exercises ordinary care in the selection of its employees and provides adequate and competent machinery, outfit, and appliances, and prescribes proper rules and regulations for their use, and has no knowledge or notice of any defects in them, and no circumstances exist sufficient to charge it with such knowledge or notice, it is guilty of want of ordinary care, within § 1131, toward an employee who is injured by the negligence of his co-employees in the same general business by the mere fact of the happening of such injury through such negligence, although § 1130 distinctly declares that in such a case, the employer shall not be liable to the injured employee.
It is a rule for the construction of statutory provisions, especially those embraced in the same statute, that all must be construed so that all shall have effect, if possible. There is ample scope for the application of § 1131 by limiting it to cases not embraced within § 1130. Otherwise, no force is given to § 1130.
The failure to give proper effect to § 1130 is the more marked because, with one exception, the only authorities cited in the opinion of the Court to sustain its views are cases decided where the common law prevails, and not where such statutory provisions as those in Dakota exist -- provisions which declare that the common law is abrogated as to the subject matter of the controversy in this suit.
Sections 4, 1969, 1970, and 1971 of the Civil Code of California are the same, respectively, as sections 2129, 1129, 1130, and 1131 of the Civil Code of Dakota. But there is nothing in the case of Beeson v. Green Mountain Gold Mining Co., 57 Cal. 20, cited in the opinion of the majority of the Court, which sanctions the view that the yardmaster or the car repairer in the present case was not a person employed "in the same general business" with Herbert within the meaning of such a statute.
Considering the case to be governed by the local statute, we express no opinion upon the question whether the instructions given to the jury accorded with the rules of the common law.

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