Convery v. Stubbs

Citations

• 267 Pa. 394
• 111 A. 251
• 1920 Pa. LEXIS 875

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Risles of employment■ — Obvious or hnown danger — Danger arising in worh — Unsafe appliance — Safe place to worlc — Contributory negligence — Nonsuit.</p> <p>1. One who enters the service of another assumes all risks of his work which are obvious or known to him.</p> <p>2. Where the danger arises only as the work progresses and is caused by the work done, the employer has performed his duty when he supplies the workmen with the means of protecting themselves.</p> <p>3. It is then the duty of the employees to look out for danger and protect themselves by the proper use of the means placed at their disposal.</p> <p>4. In an action by an employee to recover damages for personal injuries, a nonsuit is properly entered, where the evidence for plaintiff shows that he was working in demolishing a brick wall of a building when injured; that he was sixty-seven years old and experienced in the work; that he used the process of “pinching,” which was “taking the foundation from underneath on the outside” by the use of crowbars; that his employer, seeing this, insisted, against plaintiff’s protest, in his using a joist, which plaintiff was directed to place as a prop against the wall “to save their lives”; that the joist was a proper and safe appliance; but that plaintiff so adjusted it that, when the wall fell, he was hit on the head by the end of the joist, and injured.</p> <p>5. In such a case it cannot be said that the employer did a careless thing when, after providing his employee with the means of protecting himself from a possible mishap, he permitted him to continue at his task in the usual and customary manner of performing such work. He was not bound to assume that the employee would so place the joist that it would harm him when the wall fell.</p>