136 Mo. App. 225 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1909
Plaintiff was an employee of defendant as a carpenter. He was injured while engaged in such service and brought this action for damages. He recovered a judgment for two thousand dollars.
The work consisted in putting on finish in the interior of a large banking building in Kansas City, and it was in charge of one Kincaid as defendant’s representative and foreman of the work. Plaintiff was a witness in his own behalf. He stated that he and one
According to Beals, who was a witness for plaintiff, several days before, when the foreman set them to work, he said to them (speaking directly to Beal) that there was scaffold material, — “you gentlemen select your own material and build these scaffolds for the
We feel clear that the evidence in plaintiff’s behalf, without looking to that for defendant, leaves him without a legal claim. “A servant is not a mere machine employed to drive a nail here or a spike there, where directed by the master, or some one representing him. Many things involving the exercise of judgment may properly be left to the servant. Hence it has been held, where the master employs competent workmen, and provides suitable material for staging and intrusts the duty of erecting it to the workmen, as a part of the work which they are engaged to perform, that he is not liable to one of the workmen for injuries resulting to one of them from the falling of the staging. [Bowen v. Railroad, 95 Mo. 268, 277; Herbert v. Wiggins Perry Co., 107 Mo. App. 287, and authorities therein cited; Kelly v. Narcross, 121 Mass. 508; Killea v. Faxon, 125 Mass. 485; Ross v. Walker, 139 Pa. St. 42.]
But plaintiff testified that it was not said to him by the foreman, for him, or those working with him, to build their own scaffolding. It was however said to the others, as Beals, plaintiff’s companion, or, as plaintiff termed him, “partner,” in the work, testified. It is not to be expected that the master or his represen