Court Opinion

ID: 9807625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:11:35.4292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:49:57.182346
License: Public Domain

Walker, J.,
concurring: A new trial is awarded in this case because it is apparent as a matter of law that if the plaintiff: disobeyed the order to stop the machine when cleaning it, the proximate cause of the injury was his failure to observe instructions. In this view of the case I fully concur. But it is my opinion that the presiding judge was right in submitting this question to the jury under the first issue. If the plaintiff was told that he must not clean the machine while it was running and he did clean it in violation of this instruction while it was in motion, and was injured, his own wilful act in disobeying the order was not only the proximate cause of his injury, but the sole efficient cause thereof. When the defendant forbade him to clean the machine while it was running and directed him to stop it before attempting to *334clean it, it provided for bim a perfectly safe method for performing his work and if he chose to disregard the order of his employer and to do the work in a way not only dangerous but which had been forbidden, his employer is in no legal ■sense responsible for his conduct. Where is there any act of negligence or any omission of duty on the part of the employer? Tie cannot be said to have been negligent at all, unless there was a breach of some duty owing by him to his employee. The fact that a slat was missing did not render the cleaning of the machine dangerous if the employee had obeyed instructions and the law will not hear him allege that the machine was defective and dangerous when it was his own wrongful act that made it so. No man will be permitted to take advantage of his own wrong, is a maxim of the law of universal acceptance and application. The master must provide for his servant a reasonably safe place, appliances and methods for performing his work and, when he has done this, he has fulfilled his duty, and if the servant then chooses to reject the provision thus made by the master and adopts some method of his own for doing the work, which proves to be dangerous, and he is injured thereby, it is impossible to see how the master has failed in his duty in any respect so as to impute the injury of the servant to his negligence as in any degree its cause, or as even a contributing cause; the fault lies solely with the servant. He is to blame for doing that which he was forbidden to do and which caused the injury. He was not required to put his hand between the slats when operating the machine, nor was he required to do so when cleaning it while it was in motion. His master gave him a perfectly safe vray to clean it and he deliberately chose a dangerous one. In such a state of the facts I am unable to see that the defendant was at fault. It is not a question involving contributory negligence for that presupposes negligence of the master. The case, turns upon whether the master was negligent. If he gave the instruction and it was *335violated by the servant, the latter was not injured by the master’s negligence. If the instruction was not given to the servant, then the master’s negligence caused the injury, if the machine was defective and the injury resulted therefrom and the servant was himself free from any negligence which proximately contributed to bis injury.
The majority of the court in Mason v. Railroad, 111 N. C., 482, and 114 N. C., 118, took this view of the question, as will appear from the concurring opinion of Shepherd, C. J., (111 N. C., at p. 499) and the concurring' opinion of Burwell, J., in the same case when again before this court (114 N. C., at p. 124.) In that case it is true the defect was in bumpers and the principle as applied to that class of cases was somewhat modified in Greenlee v. Railroad, 122 N. C., 977, and Troxler v. Railroad, 122 N. C., 902 and 124 N. C., 189, but so far as it applies to the class of cases with which we are now dealing, it remains to this day unimpaired. If we insert the word “slats,” where the word “bumpers” appears in the two opinions just referred to, the application of the principle to our case is made perfectly plain. Ghief Justice Shepherd, said: “In the decisions cited, where a recovery was bad for negligence in not furnishing bumpers, there was either no regulation like that in the present case, or such regulation had been waived. I cannot understand bow it was the duty of the defendant to provide against an accident which could not possibly have happened but for a violation of its reasonable regulations. However negligent, then, as to others, the defendant may - have been in not seeing that the cars were provided with bumpers, ¦ such negligence was not actionable by this plaintiff if his injuries were caused by his disobedience of an existing regulation (known and agreed to by him) forbidding him from going between the cars under any circumstance for the purpose of coupling.” Mason v. Railroad, 111 N. C., 499. Justice MacRae concurred generally with the Chief Justice in his opinion. *336Justice Burwell said: “I see in the case no evidence whatever of negligence on the part of the defendant and abundant evidence of negligence on the part of the plaintiff. The rule of the defendant company of wbicb the plaintiff bad full knowledge, and which, out of abundance of caution, be bad been required specially to promise to obey, prohibited him from going between the cars for the purpose of coupling or uncoupling them, ‘under any circumstances’ when they were attached to an engine. '. . . The rule was notice to the plaintiff that be should expect no provision for bis safety when the cars were pushed together by the movement of the engine, for he was expected not to go between them.” Mason v. Railroad, 114 N. C., at id. 724.
It is impossible to see how the master can be said to be guilty of any negligence when the servant committed the only wrong in violating a rule adopted for his own safety, and especially when it clearly appears that the accident could not have happened if he had kept and observed the implied promise be made to bis master not to clean tbe machine when in motion. He had a perfectly safe way to do his appointed work but, instead of pursuing it, he chose a different one and thrust bis band into a place where he must have known there was danger because he had been warned against the use of that method in doing the work. With respect to tbe plaintiff, the machine was not defective because be had a safe way with which to do his work and, if he. had confined himself to that way, be would not have been hurt. Besides, the master was not oblidged to anticipate his servant’s disobedience of orders and provide against its consequences. It follows that the defendant owed no duty to the plaintiff and therefore could not have been guilty of any negligence, if he gave the order and it was disobeyed.