Court Opinion

ID: 9829125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:01:01.815317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:57.598334
License: Public Domain

On Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing.
On a former day of the present term of this court we reversed and remanded this case on account of the supposed error of the trial court in submitting to the jury the issue as to the duty of a master to furnish a servant a safe place in which to work. The charge upon which our decision was based is as follows: “Now, if you find from a preponderance of the evidence that plaintiff at the time of the accident was inexperienced in the work then being done, and did not know of the danger thereof, and if you further find that W. C. Roettiger, as vice principal of the defendant, employed the plaintiff to work for the defendant and placed him under the control and management, in doing his work, of John Bruce, and gave said Bruce authority as foreman to direct the labors of plaintiff and other employés engaged in the erection of said structure; and if you further find that Roettiger and Bruce, or ei- | ther of them, knew of the danger of working at the place where plaintiff was injured, and knew that plaintiff was inexperienced, or while working upon said structure immediately before said accident happened, said Roettiger and Bruce, or either of them, saw from plaintiff’s acts and conduct that he w:ts inexperienced, and failed to warn him of such danger, and that such failure to warn plaintiff of such danger was the direct and proximate result of his injuries, if any, you will find for plaintiff, unless you find for defendant under-instructions hereinafter given you.”
Appellee filed a motion for a rehearing, in which he contended that the trial court did not in fact submit this issue. A more careful examination of said charge convinced us that we had misconstrued the same. As will be seen, said charge is to the effect that if appellee did not know of the danger “of the work being done,” and that appellant’s agents and vice principals did know of such danger, etc. Such danger as to “the work being done” might arise from the negligence of appellant in attempting to have the same done without reference to the danger of the place in which the same was being done. Appel-lee contends that the negligence of Bruce, the vice principal of appellant in giving the order to pull on the ropes, under the circumstances under which said order was given, was the proximate cause of the injury; and if this be true, the danger of the place, in the sense that he could not escape from the falling timber as easily as he might have done had he been on the ground, was but a condition and not the cause of the injury.
Appellee’s motion for a rehearing having been granted, and the judgment of the lower court affirmed, appellant has filed a motion for a rehearing in which it also asserts that the trial court did not submit to the jury the issue as to a safe place in which to work. The language of appellant’s motion in this regard is as follows: “In its general charge the trial court did not instruct the jury upon the obligation of the master to furnish the servant a safe place in which to work; and in its general charge and in the special charges given at appellant’s request, instructed the jury as to the law of assumed risk, assumed risk of a known danger, negligence of fellow servants, the duty of the master to warn and the circumstances under which he was relieved of that duty.” Such being the case, we see no reason for setting aside the judgment of the court below.
Appellant insists that the court erred in failing to peremptorily instruct the jury to return a verdict for defendant, and cites in its able brief a number of decisions relating to obvious danger and assumed risk. If ap-pellee had been injured in obeying an order of appellant, in the doing of which he must, as a reasonable man, have known that he was exposing himself to danger, and had suf*369fered injury by tbe happening of the thing, the danger of which must have been apparent to him, he could not recover for such injury. It often happens that one takes chances in doing a thing where the danger is obvious, and yet is not injured. Now can it be said that because he assumed the risk as to the dangers which were, obvious, and was injured by something, the danger of which, was not obvious, but which occurred on account of the intervening negligence of the master, that he cannot recover for such injury? The answer is obvious. Take, as an illustration, the case of Hightower v. Gray, 36 Tex. Civ. App. 674, 83 S. W. 254, cited by appellant, and which may well take rank as a leading case on this subject. Here the plaintiff was digging a cellar under a house by tunneling under rock, and then striking it and causing it to fall. A rock under which he had tunneled fell upon him of its weight. Held he could not recover. He had been taking chances on this for seven - or eight days, and had not been hurt, and yet the danger was obvious to every man who knows thp laws of gravitation. But suppose he had tunneled under a rock which had not fallen, and which would not have fallen of its weight, and his employer, unknown to him, had placed a heavy body on the earth above, by reason of which the rock had been caused to fall and injure the employs, could it be contended that because he took the chances of the rock falling of its own weight that he also assumed the risk of the employer’s negligence, whereby the rock was caused to fall? Certainly not
It will be seen from the excerpt from appellant’s motion as above set out that the issues arising upon the facts of this case were submitted to the jury, and the evidence being conflicting, and sufficient to support the verdict of the jury, we do not feel called upon to disturb the judgment of the court below. We therefore overrule appellant’s motion for rehearing.
Motion overruled.