Rogers v. Whiting Manufacturing Co.Rogers v. Whiting Manufacturing Co.
This is аn action for damages for an injury sustained while operating a lathe machine for the defendant. The plaintiff contended that the proximate cаuse of his injury was the failure of the defendant to furnish a guаrd or shield to go over the saws to prevent their throwing splinters and -pieces of wood back, by reason of which defect the plaintiff was injured.
It is settled law in this State, “That an employer of labor to assist in thе operation of railways, mills, and other plants where the machinery is more or less complicated, and more especially where driven by meсhanical power, is required to provide for thе employees in the exercise of proрer care a reasonably safe place to work, and supply them with machinery, implements, and appliances reasonably safe and suitable for the work in which they are engaged and such as are approved and in general use in plants and places of like kind and character.”
Hicks v. Manufacutring Co.,
The first nine of the defendant’s exceptions are tо the introduction of evidence tending to show that guаrds or shields were *486 in general use in machines of like сharacter or kinds. But such evidence is compеtent, and in this case it was shown that the witnesses had seеn nine different mills in which such guards were in use. This was sufficient to justify thе court in leaving it to the jury to find whether the defendant had been guilty of negligence in not having a protection of this kind, and it was not error to refuse a prayеr, “Even if the jury shall find a mill in Georgia, one in Tennessee, one in Andrews, and one in Swain County has machines upon which were shields or hoods, this is not sufficient to show a genеral custom.” The prayer was properly refused, for the evidence was there were at leаst nine mills as to which the evidence showed use of these shields over saws, though it is true that as to some of them the lathe machines were not in use in a sawmill, as was the case here, but that was immaterial.
Nor was it еrror to refuse the defendant’s prayer to charge that “Unless the plaintiff has shown by the greater weight оf evidence that these hoods or shields were in general use, the jury could not consider as proximate cause any injury caused by a chip flying out and striking the plaintiff.” If the flying out of the chip was caused by the аbsence of the shield or hood, and the jury should further find thаt this would have been prevented by the use of the shield or hood, and the failure to provide such was want of reasonable care “on the part оf the defendant, it would be liable.
Mason v. R. R.,
The plaintiff in his brief restricts himself to'the first ten assignments of error, thus under the rule abandoning the others, which hence need not be discussed. This case, in its general features, resembles
Sims v. Lindsay,
No error.