66 So. 85 | Ala. | 1914
The first and second counts of the amended complaint proceeded on the superintendence clause of the statute. The third count was framed with the unmistakable purpose of stating a case under the common law. It made mention of no co-employee of plaintiff. It alleged that plaintiff’s injury had resulted from the fact that “defendants negligently failed to provide plaintiff with a reasonably safe place for plaintiff to be engaged in or about the said business of defendants.”
For plaintiff the evidence tended to show that defendants, as contractors for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, were engaged in excavating and removing the earth from a cut through which the company proposed to lay a line of track. The work was done by means of a steam.shovel, the operation of which was committed to employees of defendants. .To one side, as the work progressed, a sloping wall or bank about 25 feet high was left, and one day the process of excavating undermined and partially dislodged a stump at the upper edge of the wall or bank so that it toppled over and remained suspended above the place where the steam shovel was being worked. Defendants were working-day and night shifts, and during the succeeding night natural causes, without further undermining by the
Construed with reference to the law invoked, the third count of the complaint charged plaintiff’s injury to the personal wrong of defendants or of a vice principal for whose wrong defendants are answerable according to the doctrine and postulate of that law. In the evidence, which was addressed to the proposition that defendants were liable for the reason that one or the other of their named superintendents had been derelict
The character of the work in which defendants were engaged may have been such, its complication and danger such, that a reasonable regard for the safety of their employees demanded that superintendents should be appointed to overlook its progress; but, whether so or not, superintendents were furnished, as plaintiff’s evidence went to show, and no complaint of their competency or fitness is found in pleadings or proof, and here, for aught appearing, the common-law duty of defendants ended, for these superintendents according to the common law as declared in this state, were fellow servants of plaintiff, and for their negligence defendants were not responsible, except as responsibility has been imposed by the Employers’ Liability Statute.—Mobile & Ohio R. R. Co. v. Thomas, 42 Ala. 672; Mobile & Montgomery Ry. Co. v. Smith, 59 Ala. 245; Tyson v. South & Worth Ala. R. R. Co., 61 Ala. 554, 32 Am. Rep. 8. We do not speak, of course, Avith reference to an employer’s liability for the nonobservance of common-law duties other than the duty to provide a safe place, or, in some cases, superintendence, because no question about them is raised on the record. It may be that some of our cases—that of Mobile & Montgomery Ry. Co. v. Smith, supra, for instance — ’“have gone to the extremest verge of soundness in applying the doctrine of fellow servants to the exemption of the employer from liability” (Georgia Pacific Ry. Co. v. Davis, 92 Ala. 313, 9 South. 252, 25 Am. St. Rep. 47); but they have been consistently
That it is the duty in general of an employer to exercise due care to provide a reasonably safe place, having-regard to the kind of work involved, in which his employees may do the work assigned to them cannot be denied; and, where this duty is delegated to an employee, as of necessity it frequently must be, the employee to whom it is delegated represents the master or employer in such sense that the latter is liable for his negligence in its discharge.—4 Labatt, Mas. & Ser. (2d Ed.) § 1483. Rut the duty of maintaining the safety of the place is not absolutely personal to the master, and the rule established by the decisions of this court, in common with others of excellent authority, is that it may be discharged by committing its performance to agents carefully selected for competency and fitness.—Cases supra; Woodward Iron Co. v. Cook, 121 Ala. 353, 27 South. 155; Tutwiler C., C. & I. Co. v. Farrington, 111 Ala. 157, 39 South. 898; Whitmore v. Ala. Consolidated C. & I. Co., 161 Ala. 125, 51 South. 397, 137 Am. St. Rep. 31.
Our reading of the record and the briefs of counsel in this case produces the impression that probably the trial court in refusing to defendants the general charge as to count 3 proceeded upon the idea that the evidence justified a finding that one or the other of defendants’ named superintendents was negligent in pushing the shovel forward, as the work progressed, to a point .where those engaged in its operation would be exposed to danger from the incomplete or defective finished sides or walls of the cut, and that the space between thus left behind the scoop or dipper of the shovel, and yet occupied by the operative machinery of the shovel, became and was a place provided within the meaning of the
It is generally considered that the rule requiring an employer to provide his employee with a safe place does not operate “where the prosecution of the work itself makes the place and creates its dangers.” — 4 Labatt, § 1518, to which many cases are cited. This exception to the master’s specific duty to provide a safe place is based upon reasonable considerations which are thus stated by the Supreme Court of New Jersey: “Whether the master retain the superintendence and management of his business, or withdraws himself from it and devolves it on a yice principal or representative, it is quite apparent that, although the master or his representative may devise the plans, engage the workmen, provide the machinery and tools, and direct the performance of the work, neither can, as a general rule, be continually present at the execution of all such work. It is the necessary consequence that the mere execution of the planned work must be intrusted to workmen, and, where necessary, to groups or gangs of workmen, and in such case that one should be selected as the leader, boss, or foreman to see to the execution of such work. This sort of superiority of service is so essential and so universal that every workman, in entering upon a contract of service, must contemplate its being made use of in a proper case. He therefore makes his contract of service in contemplation of the risk of injury from the negligence of a boss or foreman, as well as from the negligence of another fellow workman. The foreman or superior servant stands to him, in that respect, in the pre
By the statute the master’s immunity by reason of the fellow-servant doctrine has been curtailed; his liability has been enlarged. It is still practically impossible that the master or his superintendent should supervise every detail of the master’s work, it is still unnecessary that the master shall do for his employee that which the employee may do for himself to the better advantage of both, but, if superintendence is intrusted to a co-employee, and it be found, as a fact, having regard for the nature and extent of the superintendence delegated, that the superintending employee, acting within the line and scope of his authority, has failed in due care for his inferior co-employee, there may be a recovery under the statute. But in our system of pleading-each count is a separate complaint, the sufficiency of which is to be adjudged upon its own allegations, and to state a case under the statute the complaint must set out the fact of superintendence and the particular wherein there has been a failure to exercise due care, as was done in counts 1 and 2.—Woodward Iron Co. v. Marbut, 183 Ala. 310, 62 South. 804.
It results from the foregoing considerations, which inhere in the law of the subject and the substance of the separate counts, that, while the statutory counts 1 and 2 were properly submitted to the jury, defendants were entitled to the general charge requested as to count 3 which proceeded, as we have said, distinctly upon the ground that defendants had failed in some duty imposed upon them by the common law. In that count the allegation is, in effect, that defendants or some vice
In argument touching the question discussed appellee relies upon Alabama Consolidated C. & I. Co. v. Hammond, 156 Ala. 257, 47 South. 248. The counts upon which that case went to the jury were both framed under the statute. Appellee also relies upon Northern Ala. Co. v. Mansell, 138 Ala. 564, 36 South. 459. One of the counts in that case proceeded on the common law; but the facts there obviously take the case without the influence of the principles which have controlled our decision in the case at bar.
For the reasons stated above defendants Avere entitled to charge 14, which was refused to them.
There was error also in the refusal of charge 27 requested by defendant.—B. R. L. & P. Co. v. Humphries, 171 Ala. 291, 54 South. 613; B. R. L. & P. Co. v. Gon
For the errors indicated, the judgment must be reversed, and the cause remanded.
Reversed and remanded.