130 N.Y.S. 339 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1911
In the case at bar the plaintiff, a hoy twenty years of ■ age at the time of the accident, was employed as a pipefitter or steamfitter’s assistant in the defendant’s factory. He had been employed there for about three years, and was conversant with every part of the factory. On the day of the accident he was sent from a place in the defendant’s cellar to what was known as the steamroom, apparently from the evidence upon the same level, for the purpose of securing some of the asbestos covering used in the work of fitting the. steam pipes. As he opened the door of the steamroom he found that the lights, which had been burning in the morning when he was there, had been extinguished and that the room was dark — so dark that he could not see anything in room. He knew that there was a box inside the room which was necessary to' something connected with the steam plant, and he passed to the left of the location of this box, and while groping around in the darkness looking for the asbestos, the general location of which was known to him, he came into collision with a gas jet projecting from the side of the building, and one of his eyes was more or less seriously injured.' While the evidence does not clearly disclose the fact, it is probably the case that the gas jet was put in originally for the purpose of lighting this dark room, and that subsequently the place was equipped with four electric lights and the use of the gas abandoned, though it does not appear that the gas had' been shut off or that it was entirely out of use. The room was not used for a workroom; it was apparently devoted to the valves and pipings of the factory, with an incidental use as a stockroom for the materials used in connection with the piping, where the plaintiff was called upon to go two or three times a day. While there is some testimony on the part of one of plaintiff’s witnesses to the effect that the four electric lights maintained by the defendant in this steamroom were out of order two days or more before the accident, and that the matter had
But upon the broader question of the negligence of the' defendant in 'leaving the gas jet after installing the electric lights. Was-there any duty on the part of the defendant to anticipate that the electric lights would fail to operate at the particular time that the plaintiff or some one else would happen to he in this particular room, and that with all of the open space that this plaintiff or other person would grope around in' the darkness and come into contact with this particular gas jet ? There is no evidence that the gas jet was negligently placed; that it extended an unreasonable distance from the wall, or that there was anything about it materially different from thousands of other gas jets in similar places. All that the evidence disclosés is that the plaintiff went into this room, which the defendant usually kept lighted, knowing that it was dark, and that he came into contact with a gas jet, and the jury has found that the defendant was negligent in permitting this gas jet to he there without the room being lighted, on the theory that the defendant had failed to provide that reasonably safe place in which the plaintiff was to perform his labors which the law requires, which is practically equivalent to holding the defendant liable as insurer of its employees, for clearly no man of ordinary prudence, looking at this room prior to the accident,
The judgment and order appealed from should be reversed and a new trial granted, costs to abide the event.
Judgment and order reversed and new trial granted, costs to abide the event.