223 Pa. 129 | Pa. | 1909
Opinion by
Xavier Staebler was a roofer who had been in the employ of the defendant two years before the accident which resulted in his injury. He was sent with four other men to put a tar roof on a car barn. These men were all under the charge of Ewing, a foreman. The defendant had provided rubber shoes for the men to wear and guard rails to be fastened to the edge of the roof, when necessary to secure their safety. Soon after the men went on the roof, Staebler proceeded to put up the guard rails but was stopped by Ewing, who told him to go on with the work of laying the roof, that the roof was safe without guard rails, but that he would put them on after the first sheet of paper had been laid. Staebler worked an hour and a half on the roof, when he slipped and fell off the edge. The negligence alleged was the failure to place guard rails on the roof.
Unless Ewing was a vice principal for whose negligence his employer could be held responsible, the plaintiff’s case was not made out. He was not in any sense a vice principal. The testimony was that Ewing had charge of the work of putting on
The duty to provide a safe place in which to work, to which much of the appellant’s argument is directed, does not extend to the guarding of each place to which workmen may be sent to do a particular piece of work. The employer’s duty is performed by providing adequate means of making the place reasonably safe. He is not required to supervise the details of the work and he is not responsible for an error of judgment by a competent foreman who is in charge of the work: Durst v. Steel Co., 173 Pa. 162; McHugh v. Steel Co., 219 Pa. 644.
.The judgment is affirmed.