Court Opinion

ID: 6416965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-06-25 11:56:52.700853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:51:36.102824
License: Public Domain

Colt, J.
This action is founded on the alleged negligence of the defendant corporation in failing to provide and keep in repair a safe and suitable engine to be run by the plaintiff in his employment as locomotive engineer upon its road. The law applicable to cases of this description, and which defines the rights and duties that belong to the relation of master and servant, is plainly stated in the recent decisions of this court. The principles are discussed and the cases sufficiently reviewed in Coombs v. New Bedford Cordage Co. 102 Mass. 572, and in Gilman v. Eastern Railroad Co. 10 Allen, 238, and 13 Allen, 433, and Huddleston v. Lowell Machine Shop, 106 Mass. 282.
Upon a careful consideration of the evidence and the instructions given, we find no error in law for which this verdict should be set aside. The legal principles which govern the case were accurately stated. They were well adapted to the whole evidence in its different aspects, and they were all that the case required. The jury, who are presumed to have been controlled by these instructions and the evidence before them, must have found, in arriving at their verdict, that the defendant corporation, by its agents, intrusted with that duty, did not exercise ordinary care and diligence, in supplying and maintaining an engine, safe to be used for motive power upon their road, in the performance of that part of the plaintiff’s work in which he was engaged at the time; that this neglect was the cause of the injury; and that the plaintiff was himself in the exercise of ordinary care and diligence, in the use of the engine, and in avoiding danger therefrom. They must have further found, that the plaintiff did not know, or have reasonable cause to believe, that the engine was unsafe at the time of the explosion, and also that the injury was not, in whole or in part, caused by any violation of the terms of his contract of employment, as expressed in the rules of the road assented to by him.
This establishes the defendant’s liability. It is enough that there was evidence in support of these several findings, sufficient *260to justify each. It is not a question of the weight of evidence, or whether the verdict ought not to be set aside on a motion for a new trial. When the question is raised by exceptions, the only inquiry is, whether there is any evidence proper to submit to the jury as having a tendency to support the legal propositions which charge the defendant with liability. Forsyth v. Hooper, 11 Allen, 419.
The rule of law which exempts the master from responsibility to the servant for injuries received from the ordinary risks of his employment, including the negligence of his fellow-servants, does not excuse the employer from the exercise of ordinary care in supplying and maintaining suitable instrumentalities for the performance of the work required. One who enters the employment of another has a right to count on this duty, and is not required to assume the risks of the master’s negligence in this respect. The fact that it is a duty which must always be discharged, when the employer is a corporation, by officers and agents, does not relieve the corporation from the obligation. The agents who are charged with the duty of supplying safe machinery are not,- in the true sense of the rule relied on, to be regarded as fellow-servants of those who are engaged in operating it. They are charged with the master’s duty to his servant. They are employed in distinct and independent departments of service, and there is no difficulty in distinguishing them, even when the same person renders service by turns in each, as the convenience of the employer may require. In one the master cannot escape the consequence of the agent’s negligence; if the servant is injured in the other he may.
There was no error in refusing to instruct the jury as specifically requested. The first ruling asked would absolve the defendant from any duty to the plaintiff, in case of his violation of any rule which he had agreed to observe. Such violation would perhaps justify the defendant in putting an end to the relation, if it saw fit. But until so terminated, the defendant must be held to the legal responsibilities assumed.
The second instruction asked, as to the effect of the rules referred to, in imposing the sole responsibility upon the plaintiff, *261Was not warranted by their true meaning. Rule 28 clearly refers to accidents on the road which would make it unsafe to proceed; and Rule 42 imposes upon the engineer the duty of seeing that his engine is in good working order. The jury were told that the first of these rules did not relieve the defendant from responsibility for internal and invisible defects in the boiler, and that the last would not preclude the plaintiff from recovering, unless the in- , jury complained of was occasioned, in whole or in part, by such violation; but that, if the plaintiff knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, the engine to be unsafe, he could not recover.
As to the third, fifth and sixth rulings asked, it is plain that the plaintiff’s knowledge that the engine was not in good working order, and was to some extent defective, is not conclusive evidence of want of due care on his part. It was for the jury to consider on the question of the alleged contributory negligence of the plaintiff; and they were told that if the plaintiff ran the engine when it was not in good working order, knowing it, and knowing that its condition was a sign of the defect which caused the explosion by which he was injured, or when, as a competent engineer, he ought to have known it, he could not recover. The fact that it was in violation of an express rule is not material, unless such violation was a direct cause of the injury. Clarke v. Holmes, 7 H. & N. 937.
The fourth and seventh requests, so far as they differ from the instructions given, were deficient. The corporation is equally chargeable, whether the negligence was in originally failing to provide, or in afterwards failing to keep, its machinery in safe condition. The duty is essentially the same, and no sound distinction can be established in favor of the defendant on this ground; and for the rest, the question was not whether the officers named knew, or might have known, of the defect, or of the incompetency of those who had charge of the repairs, but whether the corporation in any part of its organization, by any of its agents, or for want of agents, failed to exercise due care to prevent injury to the plaintiff from defects in the instrument furnished for lis use.
*262The ninth and tenth instructions asked assume that the plain* tiff’s injury was caused by the incompetency of fellow-servants. But the action is for failing in the exercise of ordinary care to provide a suitable engine for his use in the work required. This involves an inquiry into the existence and character of the defect, the sufficiency of the means employed for its discovery and removal, the duties required of those charged with the work of providing and keeping in safe working order the motive power of the road, and the fidelity with which these duties were discharged. This all concerns the obligations imposed upon the master, and the jury may have found for the plaintiff without regard to the competency or incompetency, the care or the negligence, of the officers named. The instructions given were all that were required. Exceptions overruled.