This аction in trespass on the case was brought in the Circuit Court of Putnam County by Brooks Raynes, an infant under thе age of twenty-one years who sued by Frances V. Raynes, his legal guardian, against Nitro Pencil Comрany, a corporation, seeking the recovery of $25,000.00 damages for the loss of three оf the plaintiff’s fingers in the course of his employment by the defendant at its Nitro factory while operating a defective rotating roller. Demurrers were sustained to both an original and an amendеd declaration, the latter being spoken of hereafter as the declaration, and the action dismissed. This writ of error was granted upon the petition of' the plaintiff below.
The declаration alleges that the plaintiff, at the time of his injury, was seventeen years of age and therefore that his employment by the defendant was in violation of Code, 21-6-2. The position of the defеndant upon demurrer to the declaration was, first, that the employment of plaintiff by defendant was not one of the employments of a child under eighteen years of age prohibited by Code, 21-6-2, and that consequently the plaintiff’s sole right of recovery was under the Workmen’s Compensation Law which protected the defendant from a common law recovery for injuries sustained by its еmployees in the course of and resulting from their employment; and, second, that if the statute in question did apply the declaration of plaintiff was still defective because its allegations do not bring the plaintiff’s work at the time of his injury within any of the employments specifically prohibited, and hence do not allege that the violation of the statute was the proximate causе of that injury.
*419 The contention of the plaintiff in error, plaintiff below, was and is that his employment by the defendant was in violation of Code, 21-6-2, which provides that no child under eighteen years of age shall be employed in “* * * (g) Ore reduction works, smelters, hot rolling mills, furnaces, foundries, forging shops, or in any othеr place in which the heating, melting or heat treatment of metals is carried on; * * The declaration alleges that “furnaces’' were used within the defendant’s plant in close proximity to the рlaintiff’s working place in the process of manufacturing its product for the purpose of heating graphite and other raw materials in order to transform them into pencil lead. The position of the defendant upon demurrer is that by its plain language subsection three of section two of article six of chapter twenty-one, relied upon by the plaintiff, confines the prohibited employment to places “in which the heating, melting or heat treatment of metals is carried on” and that since graphite is not a metal and no heat treatment of a metal is allegеd to be a part of the defendant’s manufacturing process, the use of furnaces for the рurpose of preparing graphite is not an employment forbidden to a child under the age of eighteen years.
The plaintiff in error, plaintiff below, answers the contention of defendant by arguing that the section in question is a remedial statute that should be liberally construed and that cоnsequently the word “furnaces” as used therein should not be restricted to furnaces used in the heat treatment of metals.
As we understand the rule permitting the liberal construction of remedial statutes, it is, likе other rules of construction, not applied where the language under consideration сarries a plain meaning.
Kelley & Moyers v. Bowman,
In our opinion the plant of the defendant is plainly not a “place in which the heating, melting or heat treatment of metals is carried on” and therefore that it is not included within the terms of Code, 21-6-2. For that reason the judgment of the Circuit Court of Putnam County is affirmed.
Affirmed.