244 Mass. 342 | Mass. | 1923
It is contended by the defendant that a verdict should have been directed because there was no evidence warranting the jury in finding that the intestate exercised ordinary care or that his death was caused by the company’s negligence. The plaintiff’s intestate, a carpenter and jobber, had been employed by the defendant on the roof of its electric light plant in work connected with bases and forms for mushroom porcelain bushings to set in, and on openings through the roof, while his men worked on the iron base which was to support the arrestors. But thereafter he had not been on the roof until the day of the accident. The defendant however had in the meantime installed two sets of lightning arrestors connected with its high tension system for the distribution of electricity and “to provide against the sudden force of excessive current caused by lightning or other abnormal condition.” The steel tanks of the arrestors were charged at intervals during the day with electricity and electrolite by an employee apparently going to the roof and pulling a pendent chain at the easterly end of each set of arrestors, which caused , the excess of the static electric current to flow through the electrolite and thence by a discharge pipe to the ground. "From the top of each tank, running upward, was a copper rod or conductor,
So ordered.