Booth v. Stokes

Citations

• 241 Pa. 349
• 88 A. 490
• 1913 Pa. LEXIS 789

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Guarding machinery — Act of May 2, 1905, P. L. 352 — Factory inspector — Approval of guard— Instructions — Contributory negligence — Qase for jury.</p> <p>1. The Act of May 2, 1905, P. L. 352, requiring certain machinery to be properly guarded, lays a duty' upon the owner or person in charge of the establishment where the machinery is used, and failure to perform the duty, resulting in injury to an employee, will render the owner liable. ‘Properly guarded” is a relative term or expression, and whether the statutory requirement in that respect has been complied with necessarily depends upon the facts of a particular case. The necessity for an artificial guard depends upon the existence of certain conditions, and is a question of fact for the jury.</p> <p>2. The approval or disapproval of a state factory inspector is not the test of the owner’s liability in such a case. Where an employee is injured by reason of the failure of his employer to properly guard exposed machinery, the negligence consists of the disobedience of the employer and not of the factory inspector, to comply with the statutory requirements. It follows, therefore, that the approval of the guard in any case by a factory inspector is not conclusive as to whether the machinery is properly guarded within the meaning of the statute.</p> <p>3. In an action to recover damages for injuries sustained by an employee while working at a suction pump, operated by gears in defendant’s shop, the case was necessarily for the jury, where it appeared that the employee was an inexperienced youth of seventeen years of age, who had never worked at this or other similar machinery before, and who was given no instructions by the defendant as to how to avoid the danger, and where it further appeared that the cogs operating the machine were not sufficiently guarded, in consequence of which the plaintiff, while resting his hand upon the top of an insufficient guard, to protect himself from