146 Iowa 337 | Iowa | 1910
The defendant company is a manufacturer of metal products, carrying • on its business at Davenport, Iowa. The plaintiff entered its employment in August, 1906, and continued therein until his injury in February, 1907. His ordinary work was to operate a press in which metal beams and plates were squared and straightened. At times when the press was idle, he worked in the wagon department, or elsewhere, as directed. He was serving as one of the night shift, and on the night of February 10, 1907, the foreman directed him to go and assist in trucking metal “I-beams” from the place in the building - where they had been piled or stored for that purpose to a punching machine operated by one Waters. These beams, weighing about two hundred and thiry pounds each, were piled in tiers, ten to fourteen in a tier, making a pile about waist high. The flange upon one side of each beam was straight, while the other had been shaped under powerful pressure in such manner that, when piled up one upon another, the pile tended to lean toward the shaped side. As a safeguard against a fall outward to the injury of workmen, they were ordinarily piled with the straight side out, making the pile slant back. To prevent too great a slant, bolts or pieces of steel were sometimes inserted between the beams on the lower side. The part of the room' where the beams in question were stored, ■ waiting until the punching press was ready to take them, had an earth floor. According to the theory of plaintiff, this floor was for the most part firm and hard, but at the place where plaintiff was injured it was of softer and more sandy substance. In pursuance of his work as a trucker on the night in question, he went .with a fellow servant to a pile of beams from which the top one had previously been removed, and, lifting one, they placed it on the truck. Then, lifting the second, they were bending over in the act of depositing it on the truck, when the pile fell outward, striking the plain
Counsel’s argument is very largely devoted to the proposition that, where the place furnished a servant to work is in itself reasonably safe, and danger subsequently arises from the manner in which he or his fellow servants perform their labor; or where the place was originally safe, and the danger- arises in the progress of the work being done; or where the danger is one arising from the very nature of the service being performed, or from the negligent act or omission of a fellow servant — there is no liability upon the part of the master. Without stopping to indicate their limitations, the soundness of the rules here cited may be admitted. Indeed, the trial court instructed the jury in substantial accord with defendant’s contention along this line; but the verdict of the jury negatives all the facts which would call for an application of the law on which counsel’s argument is predicated.
Assuming, as we must, that the jury gave heed to the instructions of the court, it must have found that the floor of the shop at this place was defective; that but for such defect the beams would not have fallen, and plaintiff •would not have been injured; and that he was guilty of no contributory negligence. These findings are not with
Tbe judgment of tbe district court is therefore affirmed.