Court Opinion

ID: 9450606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:53:09.271238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:23.529620
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I agree with much of Judge HARTI-GAN’S opinion, and the result, but do not take quite the same road. As the Massachusetts court has pointed out, and presumably the law of Illinois is the same, there are cases where, as matter of law, any evidence of contributory negligence is just as strong as the evidence which would charge the defendant, so that the plaintiff is necessarily unable to recover. See Lajeunesse v. Tichon’s Fish and Fillet Corp., 1952, 328 Mass. 528, 530, 105 N.E.2d 245. If, as Judge HARTIGAN suggests, knowledge of the exposure to danger is the test, I would be unable to accept findings in this case which would charge the defendant, but not charge the plaintiff. Indeed, I believe any distinction should be that the plaintiff should have been more aware than the defendant of whatever danger there was. Even if defendant’s evidence that it has never had a claim before should be rejected, there is no evidence to the contrary. From the plaintiff’s own witnesses comes the testimony that he had been working for three weeks with the nails continually breaking, and as one witness put it, whizzing and zinging. To the extent that this produced a possibly dangerous condition the plaintiff, in a very literal sense was right on the firing line. There was no hidden danger of which defendant might be in a superior position to know.
However, even with full knowledge of a possibility of danger, in some situations a plaintiff may not be guilty of contributory negligence though having equal knowledge with the defendant. This may occur when the exposure to the danger occurs as a result of the plaintiff’s employment. See, e. g., Winchester v. Solomon, 1947, 322 Mass. 7, 75 N.E.2d 653; cf. Silver v. Cushner, 1937, 300 Mass. 583, 16 N.E.2d 27. In New York Central R. R. Co. v. Moynihan, 1 *824Cir., 1964, 338 F.2d 644, we took special note that it was plaintiff’s fault, not his employer’s that he was working near the known danger. Id. fn. 2. I think the jury could find that the manufacturer should have anticipated that employees might, through economic compulsion, as here, be reasonable in running the risk that it had created.
WOODBURY, J., concurs in this opinion.