45 Ind. App. 261 | Ind. Ct. App. | 1910
Appellee South Bend Electric Company is a corporation engaged in the manufacture and sale of electricity for light and power purposes in the city of South Bend, and,
This cable seat was supported by arms extending out from the pole, and iron braces extending from the outer edge of the seat down about three feet below to the pole. This pole was provided with iron steps, consisting of spikes, driven into the pole on either side, and extending out four or five inches from the face of the pole, and located at a convenient distance from each other, enabling a man to climb up the pole thereby. A cable containing a large number of wires was attached to the pole, coming to the pole from the southeast, and passing down the pole and beneath the cable seat, and up through the hole in the cable seat to the cable-box, from whence the wires were distributed to numerous pegs on
The appellant was engaged in the service of the city of South Bend, and the duties of his position required him to look after the city’s wires, and keep them in good order for the transmission of messages over them. While he was thus engaged in the discharge of his duties to the city, he had occasion to climb the before-mentioned pole, belonging to the telephone company, to which was attached the city’s police wire, and while doing so came in contact with the electric company’s wire, at a time when he had hold of said brace to the cable seat, by reason of which a current of electricity was caused to pass through his body, severely burning his arms and hands, and the shock of which knocked him from the pole and caused serious injury.
Appellant brought this action against the appellees to recover damages for such injuries. His complaint proceeded upon the theory that each company was guilty of negligence proximately contributing thereto. It is charged against the telephone company that it was negligent in attaching the cable to the cable seat with a wire, and by such means grounding the cable seat, and endangering persons who, in the performance of their duties, might rightfully climb the
A demurrer of each appellee to the complaint was overruled, issues were formed, a jury trial had, and, after the evidence was heard, the court instructed the jury to return a verdict in favor of each appellee, and the giving of this instruction is the error relied upon for the reversal of the case.
pellees, by the averment of facts clearly imposing a duty upon the part of appellees to exercise reasonable care to
The evidence disclosed the facts hereinbefore related, and, in addition to these, there was also evidence from which the jury might have found that the city’s fire alarm and police wires ran through a network of wires belonging to appellee telephone company, attached to the arms of the telephone pole, from which the appellant fell, and in close proximity to it, and that these wires of the city and the telephone company were at all times liable to, and often did come in contact with each other, and that when they did so such contact interfered, with the usefulness of both wires, and that in order to keep the wires of the telephone company and the city in good working order, and make them effective to perforan their office, it was necessary that servants of the city and of the telephone company should ascend this pole to examine as to trouble on the wires, and to remedy the same. It appears also from the evidence that there were numerous other telephone and telegraph companies, besides appellee, using the streets of the city for their wires, presumably under the same authority as that possessed by appellee, and that in stringing these wires, in crossing over each others’ lines, it was necessary that the employes of the city and of all other telephone, telegraph and electric power and light companies, engaged in work, ascend each others’ poles to effect the crossing and to keep the lines in working order, and that in doing this work such employes were liable to handle grounded wires; that telephone and telegraph wires carry a harmless voltage of electricity, but that electric light and power wires usually carry dangerous voltages .of electricity, and that a light and power wire, coming in contact with telephone and telegraph wires, or any conductor of electricity extending to the ground, at a point where the same is
The appellant was informed of trouble in the police alarm wire. He traced the trouble to where the police wire crossed the telephone company’s wire, near this pole, and it was necessary, in order definitely to locate the defect, to ascend to near the top of this telephone pole. The city’s employes had been expressly authorized, by the president and manager of the telephone company, to climb the company’s poles to locate and adjust trouble between the wires, but enjoined not to use spurs in climbing the pole, and for the purpose of ascending this pole the appellant climbed the electric light pole, by the use of spurs, until he reached the steps on the telephone pole, a distance of ten or twelve feet from the ground, and then passed over to the steps on the telephone pole, went up the pole on the southeast side thereof until he reached the light wire, when he placed his left foot on the southwest step of the pole, his left arm around the pole, swung his body around to the west side of the pole, caught
There are three grounds upon which appellees insist that the instructions of the court were justified. One is the same as that urged against the sufficiency of the complaint — that the evidence fails to show a duty owing by appellees or either of them to appellant, requiring them to exercise care in the respect in which they are charged with negligence, in that the evidence affirmatively shows that the appellant was a trespasser upon the pole, or at most a bare licensee. The second is that the evidence fails to show that the appellees were guilty of negligence proximately causing the injury com
Appellees do not seriously question the right of the city to use the telephone pole in correcting trouble upon its police and fire alarm wires, but claim that such right amounts to nothing more than a license by law, and that the duties and obligations of 1he appellees to one who exercises such license are precisely the same as those which would govern under a bare license or permission given by the owner for one to enter his premises for some purpose of the licensees, in which the owner has no interest, and cite as supporting this contention, among other cases, Woodruff v. Bowen (1894), 136 Ind. 431, 22 L. R. A. 198, and New Omaha, etc., Light Co. v. Anderson (1905), 73 Neb. 84, 102 N. W. 89. In the case of Woodruff v. Bowen, supra, a fireman, in the discharge of his duty, entered upon defendant’s premises, to aid in the extinguishment of a fire, and, owing to the negligence of the defendant in constructing the building, the walls collapsed, killing the fireman. It was held that the defendant was not liable; that the fireman was a mere licensee on the defendant’s premises, to whom the defendant owed no duty in respect to maintaining his premises in such condition that firemen would be reasonably safe thereon, in putting out fires. The case of New Omaha, etc., Light Co. v. Anderson, supra, was of a similar character. There was an injury to a fireman, while at work at a fire, because some of the fire apparatus, with which the fireman was engaged at work, came in contact with one of the defendant’s light wires. Here the same rule was applied. In other cases, this rule is applied where police officers, in the discharge of their duties, enter premises and are injured by reason of some dangerous obstruction or pitfall thereon. All eases of this class, we think, are to be distinguished from the ease here.
In the ease of Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Dinius (1908), 170 Ind. 222, 231, the Supreme Court said: “The rule well
We think the principle announced in these cases should govern here. It is true that in the ease of Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Yandenberg, supra, it is said that appellee was on the premises of appellant, upon the invitation of appellant, given through the contract between the two companies, and in this respect the ease at bar may be distinguished from the case referred to; but, in the judgment of this court, the circumstances shown by the evidence heretofore referred to, relative to the peculiar character of the business in which the parties were engaged, the relation of the city’s wires to appellees’ wires, and the imperative necessity, in the successful operation of all the wires, that the employes of each should use the pole properly to locate and remedy trouble arising
The judgment of the court below is reversed, with instructions to grant a new' trial, with leave to the parties to amend their pleadings.