198 Pa. 112 | Pa. | 1901
Opinion by
The plaintiff while in the employ of the defendants was injured while riding in a passenger elevator provided for the use of employees in their store. The elevator did not fall. It appeared from the undisputed testimony that nothing connected with it broke or was out of repair. For some reason wholly unexplained, the boy in charge of the elevator failed to stop it at the first floor, and it passed without any slackening of its speed to the basement of the building, where it struck
The safety device was intended to operate automatically in case of excessive speed of the elevator resulting from the breaking of the machinery or its failure to operate. It was not intended to check the usual speed of the elevator as it descended from floor to floor of the building, and that was the only speed in the case. The elevator did not stop at the first floor, but went on down to the basement with the same or possibly a slightly increased speed. The adjustment of the device after the accident to cause it to act under a less degree of speed may have been a wise precaution against the neglect of the operator, but it was not evidence of defective original construction or of want of proper inspection.
Under the facts developed at the trial a verdict cannot be sustained against the defendants without making them insurers of the safety of their employees. The learned judge stated that there was no direct testimony that the elevator was in any way defective, but he placed on the defendants the burden of relieving themselves of the imputation of negligence by explaining the cause of the accident, and he made
The plaintiff and the elevator boy were fellow-servants, within the rule that exempts the employer from liability. The former was employed to work in the tailoring department of a dry goods store, and the latter to run an elevator which was set apart for the use of employees in going to and from their work and in going from one floor of the building to another as their duties required. They were employed by the same person, were under the same general control, and were engaged in the same general work. They come clearly within the definition of fellow-servants given in Lehigh Valley Coal Co. v. Jones, 86 Pa. 432, and repeated in Keystone Bridge Co. v. Newberry, 96 Pa. 246, New York, Lake Erie & Western R. R. Co. v. Bell,
The judgment is reversed.