211 F. 622 | 2d Cir. | 1914
This action was brought to recovet damages for personal injuries arising out pf the alleged negligence
The court below charged the jury that it was one of the duties which any employer 'of men is under to furnish a reasonably safe place for his own workmen to work in, and that, if in the course of his workmen’s employment, some outsider' is invited upon the premises to take part in the work which is being done by his own workmen, then the same employer is bound to exercise ordinary care and prudence in seeing that the place where the party is invited to work is in a reasonably safe condition.. He also informed the jury that it was for them' to say whether the defendant had furnished a reasonably safe
In his work on Torts (3d Ed.) p. 1259, Judge Cooley states the rule as follows:
“When one expressly or by implication invites others to come upon bis premises, whether for business or for any other purpose, it is his duty to be reasonably sure that he is not inviting them ihto danger, and to that end he-' must exercise ordinary care and prudence to render the premises reasonably safe for the visit.”
It is only those parts of the premises where the person invited is-expected to be that the owner is required to keep in a reasonably safe ' condition. Cowen v. Kirby, 180 Mass. 504, 62 N. E. 968; Phillips v. Library Co., 55 N. J. Law, 315, 27 Atl. 478; League v. Stradley, 68
As the law does not require that the plaintiff should have exercised more than such care as ordinarily prudent persons would have exercised under similar circumstances to avoid danger, and as he was only required to exercise that degree of care which could reasonably be expected from one in his situation, we discover no error in the court’s submitting the question to the jury.
There are few questions within the whole range of1 judicial inquiry which are 'regarded as more peculiarly and exclusively within the province of-a jury than those of negligence. As said by the New York Court of Appeals:
“The wisdom of the time-honored rule of the common law which refers questions of fact to the jurors, and questions of law to the judge, is not more conspicuous in any class of civil cases, than in those which involve questions of negligence.1” Willis v. Long Island R. Co., 34 N. Y. 670, 679.
In a case which involved the question of the exercise of due care on the part of a child injured on a railroad turntable, the Supreme Court of the United States in Railroad v. Stout, 17 Wall. 657, 664 (21 L. Ed. 745) said:
"It is this class of cases and those akin to it that the law commits,to the decision of a jury. Twelve men of the average of the community, comprising*628 men of education and men of little education, men of learning and men Alióse learning consists only in what they have themselves seen and heard, the merchant, the mechanic, the farmer, the laborer; these sit together, consult, apply their separate experience of the affairs of life to the facts proven, and draw a unanimous conclusion. This average judgment thus given it is the great effort of the-law to obtain. ' It is assumed that twelve men know more of the common affairs of life than does one man, that they can draw wiser and safer conclusions from admitted facts thus occurring than can a single judge.”
We think no error was committed. The court was justified in submitting the case to the jury.
The judgment is affirmed.