48 La. Ann. 978 | La. | 1896
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The plaintiff sues for damages for personal injuries sustained in the course of his employment as a laborer in defendants’ service, and due, he alleges, to their negligence. The answer-denies any neglect on the part of the defendants, and charges that plaintiff’s injuries were due to his own imprudence. The appeal is by plaintiff.
The work in which plaintiff engaged was digging a pit on defendants’ premises used for molding castings. The excavation was about ten feet, and when the bottom of the pit was reached, the plaintiff was struck by a heavy piece of iron left in the pit by the “overflow
The duty of the employer to take all reasonable care against accidents to his workmen or servants, in the course of their employment, includes the obligation to keep the premises in which their services are to be rendered in safe condition. Especially is this obligation enforced in respect to latent dangers of which the employer is aware, or which with reasonable.diligence he could have informed himself. The servant takes no risk of such dangers unless the circumstances are such that he should have become aware of them in the perform
We have considered the authorities from the text books and the decisions cited by plaintiff. Hanson vs. Railway & Transportation Company, 88 An. 111; Faren vs. Seliers, 39 An. 1011; Clairain, Tutrix, vs. Telegraph Company, 40 An. 178; Myhen and Wife vs. Electric Light & Power Company, 41 An. 967. The express sion in one of these cases that contributory negligence on the plaintiff’s part, not imprudent nor negligent in a legal sense, will not bar his recovery of damages, might have had application to some phase of that case, but on the rehearing the court felt impelled to sensibly qualify the expression. The other decisions affirm that the master must provide the servant with safe appliances to do his work, and relieves him from the risk of latent defects in the the machinery he is expected to use. That duty of the master extending as it is to keeping his premises in a condition not to endanger the life or limbs of the servant, we have borne in mind in dealing with the case. But it seems to us that the decision here is controlled by that limitation of the master’s responsibility, excluding it when the injury to the plaintiff seeking relief, is due to his own carelessness. The record, in our view, puts the plaintiff in the position of undermining or removing all support from the iron, with the certainty that ought to have suggested itself that every spadeful of earth he was removing brought him nearer to the fall of' the iron, and that risk to which he exposed himself from the fall. It is the case of one provoking by heedlessness, the injury of which he complains, and which ordinary prudence on his part could have been averted. We are re
It is therefore ordered, adjudged and decreed, that the judgment of the lower court be affirmed with costs.