72 Mo. App. 679 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1898
In 1894 the plaintiff was employed by the defendant as a day laborer. The defendant had occasion to make a gas connection with a house on Cottage avenue. The plaintiff and another laborer were sent to do the work. They were in charge of a foreman. In boring the hole for the connecting pipe from the cellar of the building to the máin gas pipe in the street, the owner encountered an obstruction immediately under the granitoid sidewalk and about three feet below the surface of the walk. The workmen were ordered by the foreman to dig a trench at the point of difficulty. They did so, and found that the obstruction was a brick wall. The foreman then ordered them to run a tunnel through the wall. In attempting this they dug a hole about three feet deep, and finding that place not feasible, it was abandone’d. The foreman then ordered the plaintiff to fill up the tunnel and to break a hole through the wall large enough to receive the gas pipe. This the plaintiff did, and it was then ascertained that the wall enclosed an abandoned cistern. The cistern had been filled up with dirt and rubbish, and it contained some water. When the wall was broken the water ran into the trench where the plaintiff was at work and some of it got into his shoes. He now claims that the water was