Clark v. Best Manufacturing Co.

Citations

• 243 Pa. 353
• 90 A. 186
• 1914 Pa. LEXIS 628

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Master’s duty to warn servant cf danger — Duty to provide safe place to worlc — Conflict of laws— Torts — Case for fury.</p> <p>1. The well settled rule that an employer must provide his employees a reasonably safe place to work does not apply where continually changing conditions necessarily expose the workmen to risk, but this exception to the rule does not obtain where it appears that the employee has been required to use a passageway, the dangers of which were not temporary and should have been known to the employer. The duty to provide a reasonably safe place to work may not be delegated and the responsibility for its performance rests upon the master.</p> <p>2. Where an action is brought for injuries sustained in a foreign jurisdiction, the law of the place where the injuries occurred, not the law of the forum, applies.</p> <p>3. In an action of trespass to recover damages for personal injuries, it appeared that plaintiff had been employed by defendant construction company to assist defendant’s superintendent in fitting pipes, running through a concrete wall from an engine room into a tunnel; that plaintiff having been directed by the superintendent to get into the tunnel, passed through a pipe, which had been insecurely placed by defendant’s employees. While .returning to the engine room at the direction of the superintendent, plaintiff attempted again to pass through the pipe when the section became overbalanced and fell several feet to the floor of the tunnel, crushing and injuring him. It appeared that access to that portion of the tunnel might have been had by a longer and less convenient way which was somewhat obstructed. Defendant company had had nothing to do with laying the concrete wall. The trial judge charged the jury that by the law of Ontario, where the accident occurred, if they found that the injury resulted from the superintendent’s negligence in supervising and directing the work, there could be no recover