44 Ind. App. 583 | Ind. Ct. App. | 1909
Lead Opinion
This is an action to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by appellee while in the service of appellant in a coal mine, charging appellant with negligence in failing to provide a safe working place, by permitting the pillars left standing for the support of the mine and the safety of the men to become so thin and .weak as to permit a shot fired in an adjacent entry to blow through and injure appellee.
After formal allegations, setting forth the nature and organization of the defendant corporation and the employment of the plaintiff thereby, it is averred that, by reason of plaintiff’s being employed by defendant as a servant, it was the duty of defendant to furnish him a safe place in which to work, to protect him, and to that end it was the duty of defendant, by its mining boss, to visit and examine all working places in the mine every alternate day (this is required by
A demurrer to the complaint was overruled, an answer in general denial was filed, and trial was had before a jury, which returned a verdict in appellee’s favor, with answers to eighty-three interrogatories. Judgment was rendered on the verdict for $2,000 and costs.
Error is alleged in overruling appellant’s motion for judgment on the answers to interrogatories, notwithstanding the general verdict. It is contended that the answers to inter
Dissenting Opinion
Dissenting Opinion.
The facts averred in appellee’s complaint as constituting his cause of action are, that it was the duty of the appellant, in operating its mine, to leave, between the entries running through the same, pillars of coal from sixteen to eighteen feet thick, for the support of the mine and safety of those engaged at work therein; that the appellant neglected to perform its duty, and permited the pillars separating the first south entry from the second south entry in its mine to become reduced to eight feet in thickness; that, by reason of this condition in the pillars separating the two entries, the appellee, while engaged at his work in said mine, in the second south entry, was injured by the firing of a shot in the first south entry and its blowing through the weak pillar.
The answers to the interrogatories show that it was not the duty of the appellant to maintain a solid pillar of any thickness dividing the entries in its mine, but that the pillar which separated the entries in the mine were required to have “break throughs” from one entry to another, about every forty-five feet, and that the appellee’s injury complained of
It also appears from the answers to interrogatories that the pillar maintained between the two entries, where one was required to be, was amply sufficient to protect those working in the mine from injury by reason of shots fired in the adjoining entry, in the usual course of conducting the mining operations, and that appellee was injured solely by reason of the fact that the shot which injured him was fired at a point where the opening was to be made, and where the wall separating the entries had already been weakened by five feet of coal having been taken therefrom, in the process of making the “break through.”
Upon this state of facts, it is my view that no case is made against the appellant, and that a judgment should have been rendered in appellant’s favor upon the answers to the interrogatories.