Court Opinion

ID: 8656535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 21:16:31.438092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:56:44.839452
License: Public Domain

GIDEON, J.
(dissenting).
In the majority opinion it is conceded that it was the duty of the employer to furnish the plaintiff as a workman with a reasonably safe place in which to work. From the statement of facts it appears that plaintiff, and the other workmen, had been working at the place in question for more than four and a half years in exactly the same kind of work that the plaintiff was then doing. The statement also shows that it was necessary to keep the bar across the opening in the elevator in order to make that particular place a safe place in which to work. That plaintiff did not remove the bar is self-evident. That it was in place when he began to do the work at which lie was engaged at the time of the accident is not disputed. ‘The last time he noticed it before he went into the tank the rail was in place. While he was doing the work in the tank some of the other workmen passed up and down with the elevator, and it is reasonable to presume that the other workmen, or some one of them, left the rail down. Now, the “gross negligence” mentioned, and which is charged to the plaintiff, is that he did not come out of the tank and examine the opening into the shaft after his fellow, workmen had evidently gone down to the floor below. That is, the plaintiff is charged with gross negligence, forsooth, because he did not assume that his fellow workmen would be guilty of negligence by leaving the bar down when descending in the elevator to the floor below. In my judgment the statement of facts does not warrant any such conclusion, but, on the contrary, shows conclusively, as the jury must have found, that some one of the *514other workmen besides the plaintiff, without the plaintiff's knowledge and after he had entered the tank for the purpose of doing the work in question, negligently removed the bar and left it down. No claim is made that the workman using the elevator was a fellow servant of the plaintiff. Plaintiff did not, therefore, assume the risk due to the negligence of such fellow workman, and cannot be held responsible for any injury resulting from such negligence. The employer should be held to answer for such negligence.
The judgment of the district court, in my opinion, should be affirmed. I therefore dissent.