100 Mo. 182 | Mo. | 1889
This is an action to recover damages by a mother for the death of her minor son, William O’Brien, an employe of the defendant, who was killed in an elevator on defendant’s premises. At the close of plaintiff ’ s testimony the court gave an instruction that the plaintiff could not recover. She thereupon took a non-suit with leave; her motion to set aside the non-suit having been overruled and judgment rendered for the defendant, she appeals.
Plaintiff’s cause of action is made to appear by the following averments contained in her amended petition: “That on the fifth day of August, 1886, about eleven o’clock in the night time, the said William O’Brien, being in the employ of the defendant, as aforesaid, and being on said elevator descending from the fourth or top floor of said building to the first floor thereof, and the said elevator having descended nearly to the first or ground floor of said building, and having stopped for an instant, and the said William O’Brien having stepped to the front of said elevator to a position from which he could step therefrom to the ground or first floor so soon as said elevator should reach said first floor, and the person managing, operating and running said elevator, not being able to see said William O’Brien
It does not appear from the pleadings or evidence when or by whom the elevator in question was constructed or to whom it belonged; it only appears that at the time of the accident and for some time prior thereto the defendant was in possession of the premises, operating the elevator, for the purposes of its business in transporting material (coke, coal, ore, iron, etc.) to and from the several floors of the building in which it was situate and that for the purposes of this business it was not necessary that any «person should be transported on it. That there were stairways in the building for the use of those who desired to go up or down
The cages were open platforms and moved in a well or shaft enclosed by brick walls having arched openings on each floor, was operated by steam, and managed by the operator from the engine room adjoining the shaft on the ground floor, by means of a crank. From his position at the crank, through a window in the wall, he could see only a part of the platform of the cage on which the accident happened as it passed between the first and second floors; owing to obstructing machinery in the engine room he could not see that part between the center of the platform and the front toward the arched opening of the first floor. About five weeks before the accident William O’Brien, plaintiff’s son, became an employe of defendant; his duties were in connection with another employe to unload “rail butts” from trucks brought to his post and which were thereafter on “buggies or barrows” wheeled to the hoist by other employes and carried thereupon to their appropriate floor; with these butts before they reached, or after they were reloaded on the buggies he had nothing to do; his post was outside the building, and his duties did not require him to enter the same or go upon the elevator. Before the accident he had frequently visited the engine room, and had ridden upon the elevator.
At the time of the accident the workmen on the several floors were by an arrangement of their own furnished with ice to go into their water, at their own expense. The deceased and his comrade had made an arrangement for their ice water with the workmen on the fourth floor. On the night of the accident the
He was on the elevator not as an employe of the defendant discharging duties within the scope of his employment, but at best under an implied license for his own pleasure and convenience; he was familiar with its construction and operation, and when he went upon it accepted whatever risk there was, incident to such construction and operation. It did not become the duty of the defendant to change either the one or the other by reason of the fact that the deceased and other
The act of negligence charged is in the plan upon which the elevator was constructed, and the important preliminary inquiry, what was the proximate cause of the death of the plaintiff’s son, may obviate the necessity of any extended discussion of that plan, or its supposed connection with the injury. Obviously two concurrent acts produced that death, the act of the deceased in placing himself in an attitude to step off the elevator, and the act of the operator in suddenly reversing its motion. Conceding that the evidence does not warrant an inference that the deceased was guilty of negligence in placing himself in the position he did at the time and under the circumstances, then, if his death was the result of any negligent act, it was that of the operator in reversing the motion of the elevator. And that negligent act was the proximate cause of his death. This act being the immediate cause of the injury complained of, if it was contributed to in any manner by the supposed defect in the plan of construction, that defect at best could only be a remote cause, and would not support plaintiff’s action. There was in fact, however, no defect shown in the plan, or the construction of the elevator to contribute to the death of plaintiff’s
The allegations of the petition were wholly unsupported by the evidence both as to the alleged act of negligence, and as to the proximate cause of the death of William O’Brien, and at the close of plaintiff’s case the court could not do otherwise than instruct that she could not recover, and there was no error in its refusal to set aside the non-suit taken by reason of such instruction.