187 Mass. 1 | Mass. | 1904
The work in hand was the installation by the defendant of an electrical generator in the power house of a railway company. The undertaking was in its fiature temporary. The building with its entrances and floors did not belong to the defendant and was to be used by it only while it was installing the machinery in the power house. Before the plaintiff who was a common workman began his employment there a pit had been constructed in and below the floor to receive the generator and the fly wheel of the engine which was to drive it. In one part of the pit the lower half of the field piece of the generator had been placed. This half was a metal structure weighing sixteen tons or more, and portions of it rose three or four feet above the level of the floor. Tackle used to bring into place heavy parts of the machinery to be installed had been hitched to one end of that half of the field piece which had been put in the pit. To prevent the strain of the tackle from moving the field piece in the pit a brace had been placed between it and the opposite side wall of the pit, about two feet from the end of the pit. This brace was a stick of lumber three and one half feet in length six inches wide and five inches thick supported at the end next the field piece by an iron flange of the field piece, and at the other end by the friction of the end of the brace against the perpendicular side wall of the pit, the brace having been put in place by resting one end on the flange and driving down the other end with a sledge. All this had been done before the plaintiff had any connection with the work. At the end of the brace which was next the field piece there rose perpendicularly above the level of the floor a part of the field piece so that the brace could not be used for passage directly across the pit, but by stepping from the floor at the end on one side of the pit to the brace and then to the floor one wishing to get from one side to the other could cross a corner of the pit and save a little distance. The part of the pit unoccupied by the field piece was three and one half feet wide and about twenty feet long, and
The plaintiff had worked for a week in the place described, as a general laborer, moving blocking and doing other things. During this time as he testified he had seen other workmen and the superintendent frequently use the brace by stepping on it in order to cross the pit, and he testified that he thought the brace was put there to go across. Having occasion to go to a workman who was in the pit, the plaintiff instead of passing around the end of the pit, stepped upon the brace and so crossed. Immediately thereafter having occasion to go to the side of the pit from which he first started, in attempting to return he again stepped upon the brace, when it gave way causing him to fall into the pit. He sues under the employers’ liability act to recover for injuries occasioned by the fall, contending that he was hurt by reason of the.negligence of the superintendent in charge, in not having the brace supported at the end next the wall and in allowing it to be used as a bridge for passage without warning that one end was unsupported.
The circumstances stated distinguish the present case from the decisions on which the plaintiff relies. Here it is plain that the stick of timber which gave way was designed only as a brace. There was no occasion for a bridge across the pit at a point only two feet from the end of the pit, and the rising of the part of the field piece in the middle of the pit’s width at one end of the brace showed so plainly that the brace was not a bridge that any one who undertook to step upon it must be taken to have known that it was not put there as a bridge or way. If the plaintiff thought it was put there to go across upon he was negligent in his examination of the place where he was set to work and in his deductions from what he saw, and so in his use of the brace as a bridge.
In Dolphin v. Plumley, 167 Mass. 167, the saw mill was in permanent use, and the path which the plaintiff took was if not
Verdict for the defendant to stand.