Court Opinion

ID: 9829295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:10:04.662796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:59.575566
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[6] Bearing in mind the ninth assignment of error, challenging the instruction of the court, on the question of the master warning the plaintiff, we have probably traveled from the main issue, to some extent, in the opinion. Applying the controversy over the rule, to the actual record as presented, the question is, Should the master be required to warn Barrentine, before he started around the inclosure, to close the doors, after the lights were out? He knew it was dark, and the inability to see the stobs was as imputable to Mm as any other person. He had been closing the doors during the different periods of time he had been engaged in work for nearly 2 years; he testified he did not have to be warned about running over the stobs, though he did say he did not know of the danger resultant from the stobs. Of course he did not have to be warned about running over the stobs, but, was he as cognizant of the danger in stumbling over the stobs, as the master ? To say that the master, under such conditions, would have to warn a minor of the experience Barrentine is shown to have had not to stump his toe upon the stobs it seems to us exceeds the limit of the persons attributable by the law, requiring instructions to minors by employers. Bessey v. Newichawanick Co., 94 Me. 61, 46 Atl. 806; Wagner v. Plano Man. Co., 110 Wis. 48, 85 N. W. 643. There is no duty imposed upon the master to instruct a minor servant when he could not enlarge the minor’s knowledge in the premises. Northern Alabama Coal, Iron & R. R. Co. v. Beacham, 140 Ala. 422, 37 South. 227. An employer is not required to instruct a 14 year old boy of average intelligence of allowing a portion of his body to project beyond the sides of an elevator on which his duties required him to ride, where he already knows that if he does so he is likely to be.caught between the elevator and passing floors and injured. Cronin v. Columbian Mfg. Co., 75 N. H. 319, 74 Atl. 180, 29 L. R. A. (N. S.) 111. See, also, a discussion by Justice Presler, when on the Ft. Worth Court of Civil Appeals, in the case of Mitchell v. Comanche Cotton Oil Co., 51 Tex. Civ. App. 507-511, 113 S. W. 158.
[7] If the appellant was not required to warn the appellee, Barrentine, to be careful of the stobs, and avoid them, the charge that a failure to warn, if a man of ordinary prudence would have instructed Barrentine, constituted negligence was material error.
It is true that the criticism embodied in the particular assignment could have been leveled at the whole paragraph of the charge, on the particular question. However, we think the assignment, based upon the exceptions to the charge of the court, sufficiently raised the error to the trial court, as that we should regard it on this appeal.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.