The action is brought under the Employers’ Liability Act (Labor Law [Consol. Laws, chap. 31; Laws of 1909, chap. 36], art. 14) by servant against master. A question submitted to the jury, upon which much stress was laid by the learned court, was the liability of the defendant for failure to furnish the plaintiff, its servant, with a safe place for work. The learned counsel for the respondent insists that, inasmuch as this submission was not excepted to, the theory of trial must control.
But that rule does not apply in this court, for we may review the question in the absence of any exception. (Leach v. Williams, 12 App. Div. 173; Vorce v. Oppenheim, 37 id. 69; Roberts v. Tobias, 120 N. Y. 1.) I think that the case did not present the feature of a safe place to work. The defendant was building a railroad in a cut twenty-five feet deep. The work required the blasting out of rock which was taken away by a steam shovel pushed forward on tracks as the work went on. The plaintiff labored in the cut at cleaning up, clearing the tracks and the drill holes and in relaying the tracks. About one hour before the accident blasts had been fired and the steam shovel had lowered part of the dislodged rocks. The plaintiff was ordered by the defendant’s servant Tucci, described as “the boss,” to take out a drill from a piece of rock then in the bucket of the shovel. As he went about his task a piece of rock partly lodged in the side of the cut fell out and down and struck the plaintiff. The case did not present the feature of safe place, inasmuch as the doing of the work made the place for the work. (Di Vito v. Crage, 165 N. Y. 378; Citrone v. O’Rourke Engineering Const. Co., 188 id. 339; Henry v. Hudson & Manhattan R. R. Co., 201 id. 140, 142.)
In view of the new trial it is proper to notice an exception to an instruction.- The learned court charged this request: “In determining the question of plaintiff’s contributory negligence
’ Thomas, Carr and Rich, JJ., concurred; Woodward, J., dissented.
Judgment and order reversed and new trial granted, costs to abide the event.
