Court Opinion

ID: 9660525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:15:12.284661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:20.258306
License: Public Domain

Morris, J.
The plaintiff seeks to recover damages for personal injuries received by him in falling from a ladder while decorating the interior of a pavilion at the fair grounds in Grand Forks, N. D., preparatory to a social function given by the defendant. The jury rendered a verdict for the plaintiff, whereupon the defendant made a motion in the alternative for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial. The trial court granted the motion for new trial “on the ground that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict in -that the evidence does not show that the defendant was negligent, or that the plaintiff was free from contributory negligenceThe plaintiff appeals from the order granting the new trial.
The main part of the pavilion where the accident occurred is a dance floor about 100 feet in length and 60 feet wide. It is located some distance from the meeting place and headquarters of the defendant where its paraphernalia and property are kept. The stage director of the defendant arranged for the plaintiff and four other members of the defendant corporation to do the decorating. They went to the pavilion about six o’clock • on the morning of July 10, 1948. There was no one at the pavilion to direct them and they arranged by consultation among themselves how the work was to be done. There was a wire running lengthwise through the center of the building from 15 to 16 feet above the floor. A part of the decorating scheme *367required paper streamers to be run from the sides of the building to this wire. The stage director had caused a stepladcler to be taken from the defendant’s.property room to the pavilion to be available for the use of the decorators. The plaintiff set this ladder up under the wire and while attaching paper streamers to the wire he fell from the ladder and was injured.
The ladder had been given, to the defendant by one of its members some fifteen years before the accident. It was kept in and about the defendant’s property room and had been put to various uses including that of cleaning windows. It was described by two witnesses as “rickety”. It was of light construction and weight. It had been repaired from time to time by laying it down on its side and tightening up the nails and screws so as to make it more rigid. The steps fitted into grooves. It was fourteen feet in length when folded and somewhat less than that when set up with the supports extended. A cross brace between and near the bottom of the two supports had been missing for a number of years but its absence does not appear to have contributed to the accident.
When the plaintiff set. up the ladder under the wire he saw to it that the ladder was level on all four legs. He saw nothing that would cause him to think that it was unsafe. He is six feet one inch in height. The wire was about a foot and a half above the ladder. The plaintiff ascended until the wire was about shoulder height. He then attached some streamers, descended and moved the ladder along under the wire, then ascended again and attached more streamers. He repeated this process eight or ten times over a period of an hour prior to the accident As he moved the ladder along under the wire he found that it was higher near the center of the building. When he ascended the last time he stepped up one step higher than he had been before. The step tipped and he fell to the floor and was injured. The plaintiff had never used the ladder prior to the morning of his injury but had seen it in the defendant’s property room. In his use of the ladder the plaintiff placed his hands on the sides as he ascended and descended. There is no evidence that anyone noticed that a step was loose or would tip prior to the accident. When one of the plaintiff’s fellow *368workers picked up the ladder after the accident he noticed that the second or third step from the top could be tilted hack and forth. It does not appear whether this is the step that caused the plaintiff’s fall or whether it was one higher up. None of the plaintiff’s fellow workers saw the beginning of his fall. There is no substantial conflict in the evidence:
The plaintiff was requested to perform certain services for the defendant with materials, tools, and appliances furnished by the defendant’s authorized representatives. The plaintiff was injured while performing services that he had agreed to perform for the benefit of the defendant. The services were gratuitous. Our statutory law recognizes but does not define a gratuitous employee. Sec. 34-0204 RCND 1943. It is clear that this statute contemplates that one who undertakes to do a service for another at the other’s request but without consideration is a gratuitous employee while engaged in the performance of such service. Sec. 34-0203 RCND 1943 provides that “An employer, in all cases, shall indemnify his employee for losses caused by the former’s want of ordinary care.” This provision is applicable in the case of a gratuitous employee as well as an employee for reward. The plaintiff was a gratuitous employee acting within the scope of his employment at the time he was injured. Under the circumstances here presented the same rules of liability apply as in the case of master and servant.
It is the general rule that an employer is bound to use ordinary care to furnish his employees with reasonably safe and proper tools and appliances with which to work. Meehan v. Great Northern Railway Company, 13 ND 432, 101 NW 183; Prefontaine v. Great Northern Railway Company, 51 ND 158, 199 NW 480; 35 Am Jur, Master and Servant, Sec. 138 and 175; 56 CJS, Master and Servant, Sec. 206. This rule of general liability is subject to a widely recognized exception. Where the tool or appliance is simple in construction and a defect therein is discernible without special skill or knowledge, and the employee is as well qualified as the employer to detect the defect and appraise the danger resulting therefrom the employee may not recover damages from his employer for an injury due to *369such a defect that is- unknown to the employer. Varied and extensive application of the “simple tool” doctrine is disclosed by these authorities 35 Am Jur, Sec. 143; 56 CJS, Master and Servant, Sec. 216; Labatt’s Master and Servant 2nd Edition, Sec. 924 a; Vanderpool v. Partridge, 79 Neb 165, 112 NW 318; 13 LRA NS 668, and note. Annotations on the ladder as a simple tool are found in 13 LRA NS 687, 145 ALR 542, and 40 LRA NS 832.
The’great weight of authority is to the effect that an ordinary portable stepladder is a simple tool or appliance within the meaning of the simple tool doctrine. Kelley v. Brown, 262 Mich 356, 247 NW 900; Nichols v. Bush, 291 Mich 473, 289 NW 219; Mozey v. Erickson, 182 Minn 419, 234 NW 687; Person v. Okes, 224 Minn 541, 29 NW2d 360; Hall v. United States Canning Company, 76 App Div 475, 78 NYS 617; McGill v. Cleveland and Southwestern Traction Company, 79 O St 203, 86 NE 989,19 LRA NS 793, 128 Am St Rep 705; Roper v. Ware Shoals Manufacturing Company, 139 SC 48, 137 SE 210.
In Etel v. Grubb, 157 Wash 311, 288 Pac 931, the Supreme Court of Washington refused to apply the simple tool doctrine in a stepladder case. In Puza v. C. Hennecke Company, 158 Wis 482, 149 NW 223, the court held that a stepladder was a place to work and declined to apply the simple tool doctrine. We agree with the majority of courts that an ordinary portable stepladder is a simple tool or appliance and that the employee who uses it is usually as well qualified to detect any defect therein as is the employer who furnishes it.
The ladder in question may have been somewhat longer than the average stepladder but it was otherwise of usual construction and there is no intimation that the height of the ladder in any way contributed to the accident. The plaintiff was several steps from the top when he fell. He set up the ladder in the first instance and ascended and descended some eight times over a period of about an hour prior to the accident.
Much stress has been laid on the testimony that the ladder was “rickety”, or as one witness states “wobbly”, and had been in that condition for a number of years. None of the witnesses *370testified that knowledge of this condition was acquired through special inspection or any unusual examination. The inference is that the rickety condition was obvious. If this be so, its condition must have been apparent to the plaintiff as he set up the ladder, ascended and descended, and moved it along under the wire as his work of attaching the streamers progressed. All of the witnesses to the accident and the condition of the ladder, including the plaintiff, were members of the defendant fraternal corporation and all were engaged in the project of preparing for the entertainment of an important guest. The plaintiff’s opportunity to appraise the danger attendant upon the use of the ladder was at least equal to that of the officers and members upon whose knowledge and conduct he seeks to base a charge of negligence against the defendant. If the ladder was rickety or wobbly it was a condition of such a nature as to be discovered by that observation which would naturally accompany its use.
The plaintiff’s testimony indicates that he does not attribute the accident to the general debility of the ladder, but to the fact that a step tipped when he placed his weight upon it. The condition of the step was not obvious and there is no evidence that anyone knew the step was loose prior to the accident. Consequently, none of the officers or agents of the defendant had an opportunity or an obligation to warn the plaintiff of the loose step. In the absence of knowledge, liability of the defendant resulting from this defect could only arise from an obligation on the part of its officers and agents to make a more thorough and detailed inspection than the plaintiff was obliged to do. This obligation on the part of the defendant did not exist with respect to a simple tool or appliance, the ability to inspect and the opportunity to do so being equal.
The defendant made a motion in the alternative for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial. The court granted the new trial, thus impliedly denying the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The plaintiff has appealed from the order granting a new trial, on the ground that the verdict should be sustained. Upon the record here presented *371be is in error in this contention. Tbe order appealed from is affirmed.
Burke, J., concurs.