Court Opinion

ID: 6662302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-20 21:03:04.996008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:00:12.822228
License: Public Domain

Hamer, J.,
dissenting.
As I understand it, section 3597 contemplates the construction of guards to “protect all employees against injury from belting, shafting, gearing, elevators, drums, saws,” etc. Section 3599 provides: “The fact that any employee, servant or other person shall continue to work during the time such owner has failed to comply with the provisions of this article shall not be considered as an assumption of the risk of such employment by such employee, servant or other person.” The purpose of the provision concerning the construction of guards for the shafting is the protection of employees. There seems- to be a dispute as to whether the plaintiff was employed, and concerning the capacity in which he was employed if there was in fact any employment. It is uncontroverted that the shafting, which it is claimed ought to have been protected by a guard, was about 9 or 10 feet above the floor of the building in which the injury occurred. If the plaintiff was acting within the line of his employment, if he had actually been employed, then it is important whether the shafting had been protected by the guard. If the plaintiff had not been employed to do the whitewashing, which he undertook to do, and which *681it appears was a voluntary act upon Ms part, and lie went up in close proximity to- the shafting and so was caught by a revolving shaft and injured, the defendant is not liable because it never agreed to the conditions and purpose of the employment. If plaintiff was employed to guard the machinery and in doing so should go up in the neighborhood of the shafting, about 10 feet above the floor, for the purpose of oiling the machinery, there might be a liability if he was injured, but in this case, as I understand it, he was voluntarily attempting to whitewash the inside of the structure, and he went up to the machinery which was not accessible from the floor, and while about 10 feet from the floor he sustained the injury complained of.
*682The instruction given does not seem to be warranted by the facts, and it was a license to the jury to find for the plaintiff, whatever they may have thought the facts were.