89 N.Y.S. 1074 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1904
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting):
I am unable to concur in the opinion about to be handed down by this court, which holds that it was error for the court at Trial Term to charge the following request: “That if the jury is satisfied from all the evidence that the defendant famished to the decedent and his fellow servants, for the performance of their labor, in working at the place of the accident, safe, suitable and proper materials and scaffolding for their use in the performance of their work, that
It is conceded that this is a correct statement of the defendant’s liability as it would have existed prior to the enactment of the Labor Law, but it is held to be wholly incorrect under the new rule established by that act.
Section 18 of the Labor Law (Laws of 1897, chap. 415), in so far as it has any bearing upon the questions here presented, reads as follows:
“ A person employing or directing another to perform labor of any kind in the erection,- repairing, altering or painting of a house, building or structure shall not furnish or erect, or cause to be furnished or erected for the performance of such labor, scaffolding,hoists, stays, ladders or other mechanical contrivances which are unsafe, unsuitable or improper, and which are not so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to the life and limb of a person so employed or engaged.”
The last sentence of section 19 of the Labor Law (as amd. by Laws of 1899, chap. 192), to which attention is called, provides that “alh swinging and stationary scaffolding shall be so constructed as to bear four times the maximum weight required to be dependent therefrom or placed thereon, when in use, and not more than four men shall be allowed on any swinging scaffolding at one time.” This,1 read by itself, would seem to have some bearing upon the . question, but when the whole section is brought into consideration it will be discovered that this sentence simply furnishes a standard by which the factory inspector or his deputies in cities, called upon to inspect scaffolding, and ropes, blocks, pulleys and tackle thereof, is -and are to determine his or their duties, and does not pretend to add to the duties of the master as described in the previous section. Section 19 (as amd. supra) provides that “ whenever complaint is made to the factory inspector that the scaffolding or the slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, stays, braces, ladders, irons or- ropes of any swinging or stationary scaffolding used in the construction, alteration, repairing, painting, cleaning or pointing of buildings within the limits of a city, are unsafe,” etc., such factory inspector “ shall immediately cause an inspection to be made of such scaffolding,” etc. It then provides that if, after such inspection, he finds the
I am aware that in Stewart v. Ferguson (52 App. Div. 317) a divided court, in discussing this provision- of section 19 of the Labor Law, declared that “ this establishes a criterion of the safety of a scaffold to which it is the duty of the master to conform, and if it appears that a scaffold which he has erected for the use of his employees does not possess the strength which the statute requires, the master clearly fails to do the duty towards his employee which the statute has imposed upon him,” and that the Court of Appeals, in affirming the case (164 N. Y. 553, 556), incidentally accepts this view of the law, without taking into view the whole of the section’, or at least without setting out more than this single clause of the section. But this wRas not necessary to the determination of the question before the court, and if, as sometimes happens, broader statements are made by way of argument or- otherwise than are essential to the decision of the questions presented, they are the dicta of the writer of -the opinion and not the decision of the court. A judicial opinion,
It has been; suggested, however, that while "the question of the effect of section 19 of the. Labor Law-was not necessarily involved in the Stewart Case (supra), the Court of Appeals has since had the question under consideration, and has determined -the question 'finally; but I .am unable fo discover any such necessary result from its recent opinion in. the case of Jenks v. Thompson (179 N. Y. 20). On the contrary, that case appears to me to support the view which I'have- taken of sections 1:8 .and 1,9 of the Labor Law, in so far as it has ¡any bearing upon the .question. Upon the trial of that action the plaintiff ¡offered evidence of men who had had tong experience in carpenter work, and who weré .shown to be
The learned court in Stewart v. Ferguson (52 App. Div. 317) suggests that this court has adopted its interpretation of the statute as laid down in the previous discussions of that case (34 id. 515; 44 id. 58), in the cases of McAllister v. Ferguson (50 id. 529) and in McLaughlin v. Eidlitz (Id. 518), and this is perfectly correct in so far as the question relates to the provisions of section 18 of the Labor Law, which was the only portion of the statute under review in those cases." ■ In the McLaughlin Case (supra) we adopted the view of the first department that “the obligation imposed by the statute resting upon the master is absolute, to furnish safe and suitable scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders and other mechanical contrivances for the use of its employees. The duty thus to furnish being absolute, the obligation is at all times made the act of the master, which he may not delegate to another, and from which he may not shelter himself" from respon7 sibility if the structure be in fact unsuitable and unsafe, the rule in this respect being to make the measure of obligation of the master such as is laid down in Crispin v. Babbitt (81 N. Y. 516).” This gives to section 18 of the Labor . Law as broad an interpretation as. it is capable of under any reasonable rule, and
Statutes should be construed, if possible, so as to avoid absurdity and manifest injustice. (People v. Buffalo Fish Co., 164 N. Y. 93, 97, and authority there cited.) Clearly it would be both absurd and unjust to construe this statute so as to compel even the most prudent
- If I am right in this construction of the statute, the questions raised by the plaintiff’s exceptions to the granting of defendant’s requests to charge, are very much simplified. There is no dispute in the evidence that the defendant, through his servants, constructed a scaffolding in and about the bow of a certain scow in .course of construction in bis shipyard at West Hew Brighton, Staten Island,
But the accident did not occur while Holloway was at work upon the platform which the defendant had erected.. He worked upon the scaffolding above described until'about ten-thirty a. m. of the day of the accident, when it became necessary to lower the platform. Holloway, with the three other men who were engaged in the work, took down the original platform, lowered the “ horses ” three or four feet and reconstructed the' scaffolding upon. the same general plan as that which had jn’eviously been iñ use, except that in placing the planks for the platform one of the three by ten spruce planks was discarded, for what reason does not appear, so that the platform on which Holloway and his fellow-employees resumed work a little before one o’clock of that afternoon, was only twenty inches wide, one-half .of that space being three inches thick, and the other half,' . made of the two two by ten planks placed on the top of each other, being four inches thick, so that under the defendant’s theory the tendency would be to throw all of the weight upon one of these plank sections, for the surface would be too uneven to afford a firm footing for men who were engaged in a bracing lift such as is described in the evidence, if the weight was distributed over the two sections. Indeed, the evidence is sufficient to support the finding of the jury
But the plaintiff’s theory is that under the provision of section 18 of the Labor Law, which provides for scaffolds that are “ so constructed, placed and "operated as to give proper protection to the life and limb of a person so employed or engaged,” it was the duty of the master to superintend and direct the removal and reconstruction of the scaffolding, so that it should remain absolutely safe under all circumstances; that the master should assume this burden even as against the negligence of the plaintiff’s intestate, and this is the controlling idea in all of the exceptions to which our attention is directed on this appeal. This, it seems to us, is wholly untenable. The effect of the provisions of section 18 of the Labor Law is not to relieve the injured employee from his own negligence in respect to the scaffolding, but to relieve him from the negligence of his fellow-servants; with respect to the construction = and operation of the scaffolding the fellow-servants are discharging a duty of the master, who becomes responsible for their negligence (Stewart v, Ferguson, 52 App. Div. 317, 319), but in the case at bar if the
The evidence of men who had had long experience in the construction of similar scaffolds, and who were familiar with the relative strength of timber, was overwhelming that the materials furnished were proper, and that, the scaffold furnished by the defendant was safe and proper for the work then under way when performed' in the usual and approved way, and unless there was an absolute duty on the part of the master to provide a platform which would stand a fourfold strain, the jury could not properly have reached any other' conclusion than the one which we aye now asked to reverse because of the alleged errors in, the charge of the learned trial justice, in acquiescing in the defendant’s numerous requests to charge.
The first of the alleged errors in the charge of the court relates to the sixth request to charge. This request was that “if the jury is satisfied from all. the evidence that the defendant furnished to the decedent and his fellow servants, for the performance of their labor, in working at the place of the accident, safe, suitable and proper
In so far as the “ operation ” of the scaffolding is concerned, the contention of the plaintiff that this related to the lowering and reconstructing of the same, is decidedly strained. The word “ operated ” in section 18 of the Labor Law undoubtedly referred to the various mechanical contrivances ■ made use of in suspending scaffoldings,including blocks, pulleys, ropes, stays, etc., and was intended to make the master liable for the manner in which such contrivances met the requirements of safe and proper appliances, and had no ■relation whatever to the simple reconstruction of a scaffolding made necessary by the progress of the work. The duty of the master in reference to the furnishing or erecting of scaffolding is all covered by the previous clause. While it is probably true that a fair con
The remaining criticisms of the requests to charge are all based upon equally forced "constructions, or upon the theory that the master was in duty bound to provide a scaffolding which was capable of withstanding a fourfold strain, instead of being merely liable for a failure to exercise reasonable care to provide a safe scaffolding. I am clear that the plaintiff’s theory is wrong, and that the charge, as finally completed to the jury, was a correct statement of the law of this case, in so far as any rights of the plaintiff are involved, and the defendant does not raise any questions.
The exceptions to the reception of evidence were not well taken; the plaintiff had the advantage of the same class of evidence as that which he sought to have rejected, and under the authorities we see no reason why the testimony was not proper. Hen who had had long experience in the construction of similar scaffolding, who were familiar with thé timber used and who knew its relative strength, were entitled to testify as to their opinions of the safety of a scaffolding constructed in the manner set out in the evidence. (Jenks v. Thompson, 83 App. Div. 343, 345 ; affd., 179 N. Y. 20.)
The judgment and order appealed from should be affirmed, with costs.
Judgment and order reversed and new trial granted, costs to abide the event.
Lead Opinion
This is a negligence suit arising out of the death of the plaintiff’s intestate while working for the defendant upon a scaffold in front of the how of a scow in the defendant’s shipyard. The complaint expressly charged the defendant with having negligently violated section 18 of chapter 415 of the Laws of 1897, commonly known as the Labor Law. At the conclusion of the trial the case was left to the jury in a charge to which neither party took an exception, and the only questions presented by this appeal relate to the subsequent action of the trial judge in charging sixteen requests presented by the defendant.
Many of the instructions thus given to the jury involved the legal proposition that the duty of a master to his servants in such a case as this was fully performed by furnishing proper materials for the construction of the scaffold which broke, so that where a master committed the details of the construction of the scaffold to his servants, and their negligence in carrying out those details resulted in injury to a fellow-servant, the master was not chargeable. This was the rule sanctioned in Butler v. Townsend, (126 N. Y. 105) and other authoritative decisions rendered before the enactment of the Labor Law. Section 18 of that statute, however, has changed the rule. This change has been distinctly recognized by the Appellate Division in the first department and by the Court of Appeals in the case of Stewart v. Ferguson (34 App. Div. 515 ; 52 id. 317; affd., 164 N. Y. 553). The instructions given in response to the requests of the defendant were,, therefore, highly misleading, and almost equivalent in effect to a direction to the jury to find against the plaintiff. For this error we think the judgment should be reversed.
All concurred, except Woodward, J., who read for affirmance.