124 Va. 680 | Va. | 1919
delivered the opinion of -the court.
This action was brought by Trotter against the defendant to recover damages for injuries received by him by the fall of a scaffold, erected by the defendant, and which the plaintiff was using in the course of his employment as the servant of the defendant at the time the injury was inflicted. The defendant offered no evidence, but at the conclusion of the plaintiff’s evidence demurred thereto. The trial court sustained the demurrer and entered judgment for the defendant, and to that judgment this writ of error was awarded.
On the oral argument in this court, counsel for the defendant abandoned the defense, of the contributory negligence of the plaintiff, and relied upon the defenses (1) that the defendant was not guilty of any actionable negligence, (2) that if it was negligent at all, its negligence was not the proximate cause of the injury complained of, and (3) that the plaintiff assumed the risk of the danger resulting in his injury.
It was earnestly insisted by the counsel for the defendant in error that the scaffold was strong enough to support two men as long as they were working on it and that it only broke when the plaintiff caught it in falling. The plaintiff, while testifying on this subject, said that two men had been on the scaffold at the same time, but he distinctly states that they both were not on that section at the same time.
If, upon this evidence, the jury had found that the defendant was negligent in the construction of the scaffold, we could not say that their finding was without evidence to support it.
In the case from which we have quoted, a horse was driven in the night-time across a bridge upon which there was no handrail, and was stopped after he had safely crossed the bridge and gotten fourteen feet beyond it. He then took fright and backed over the side of the bridge, causing the injury complained of. The court held that the lack of a proper handrail was the proximate cause of the injury. In arriving at this conclusion, the court announced several propositions which are stated in the headnote to 51 Am. .St. Rep., supra, as follows:
“Township authorities are bound to know that a bridge may be crossed by a spirited horse in the night-time, and that such horse may take fright; and if, by neglecting to place a guardrail upon such bridge, an injury results from the fright of such horse, their neglect is the proximate cause of the injury, and the township is liable therefor.
“Township authorities are bound to foresee, and reasonably provide against, common danger to ordinary travel on the highway. The fright of a spirited horse, and that his conduct when in fright may be unreasoning, insane and unlocked for, are common dangers which should be expected. Such authorities cannot excuse their negligence in failing to erect a guardrail upon a bridge, or make it the remote cause of an injury, by asserting that they could not foresee a particular freak of conduct in a frightened horse.
“If township authorities neglect to place guardrails, upon
In Standard Oil Co. v. Wakefield, 102 Va. 824, 47 S. E. 830, 66 L. R. A. 792, it was held that “in order to excuse a party guilty of negligence on account of the intervening act of another, the intervening act must be the superseding or responsible cause of the injury. The liability is. not averted if the act relied upon is one which might, in the natural or ordinary course, be anticipated, and the defendant’s negligence is an essential link in the chain of causation. In such cases defendant’s negligence is the efficient and proximate cause of the injury.”
There are many cases to the same effect. See mono-graphic note, 36 Am. St. Rep. 807-852. The precise form of the injury need not have been foreseen. It is enough if, after the injury has been inflicted, it can be seen that it was a natural and probable result of the negligent act complained of. “When the act complained of was such that, in view of all the circumstances, it might not improbably cause damage of some kind, the doer of the act cannot shelter himself under the defense that the actual consequence was one which rarely follows from that particular act.” 36 Am. St. Rep. 810, and cases cited. We do not understand counsel for the defendant in error to controvert this proposition, but he insists that, master cannot be held liable because its negligence, if any, was “merely a condition, as opposed to the efficient cause of the injury,” to-wit, the taking hold of the upright piece of timber by the plaintiff under the circumstances hereinbefore detailed. The weakness of the scaffold, as shown by the testimony of the
“Then I would say, gentlemen, any responsible man that would erect a scaffold for a man to work on that high from the ground—that it was absolutely an inadequately built scaffold. Now, if he had reversed his timbers and had a 2x4 upright with a 1x4 bracket—that 2x4, in the technical term of building, is called a bracket—that would have held all of the weight, if it wasn’t three feet long, that one man or two men would have put on it; but not with the vibration of twelve feet of 1x4 board; it is entirely inadequate; it don’t make any difference how it was put up; I would say that any ordinary man would have broken it under almost any circumstances.”
The scaffold was built for utility, not to walk on in the most careful and guarded manner; it may have been adequate for the latter purpose. The defendant knew that the work to be performed by the plaintiff was above his head, that he had to use-a wrench to unscrew and tighten pipes for the purpose of inserting the conduitlet at the proper places, and that while doing so he had to stand upon this scaffold. It also knew, or was chargeable with knowledge, of the character of work the plaintiff was called upon to perform. The plaintiff describes the work to be done as follows:
“You work conduits anywhere from three-inch pipes down to half-inch, and, in doing this, you have to thread your own pipe, cut it arid handle it, and it requires quite a bit of strength to thread a two-and-a-half-inch pipe or a one-inch pipe; in fact, when you go to do it, you have to get up on your die and push down.” While the breaking of the conduitlet w,as a very unusual occurrence and was not to be anticipated, still the work of the plaintiff as described by him would necessarily cause more or less vibration of the scaffold, and it should have been so constructed as to have
Upon the whole case, we are of opinion that the trial court erred in sustaining the defendant’s demurrer to the plaintiff’s evidence, and for this error its judgment must be reversed, and this court, proceeding to enter such judgment as the trial court should have entered, will enter judgment in favor of the plaintiff against the defendant for the sum of $10,000.00, with legal interest thereon from December 11, 1917, the date of the verdict, until payment, and for the costs.
Reversed.