Gallagher v. Black Creek Coal Co.

Citations

• 245 Pa. 509
• 91 A. 892
• 1914 Pa. LEXIS 907

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Mines and mining — Electric wires — Death—Mine foreman — Case for jury.</p> <p>1. In an action of trespass to recover damages for the death of plaintiffs son, caused by an electric shock, which he received while pulling an uninsulated signal wire in defendant’s mine, where it appeared that the wire was placed three or four inches below insulated electric feed wires; that the range of the oscillation of the signal wire was sufficient to allow it to come in contact with the feed wires, from one of which the insulation had been broken four or five days before the accident, and that actual contact between the wires was indicated by the fact that copper solder had been deposited on the signal wire at a point corresponding to the place on the feed wire from which the insulation had been broken, the trial judge made no error in submitting the case to the jury and defendant’s rights were sufficiently protected by instructions to the effect that to entitle the plaintiff to a verdict, the jury must find that her son’s death was caused by an electric current coming from the feed wire through the signal wire, that the defects in the feed wire would have been discovered by adequate inspection, and that the control of the electric wire was not in the mine foreman but in an electrician assigned to that duty by the superintendent of the mine.</p> <p>2. Where in such case it appeared that, while the deceased held the signal wire, he called to his assistant, who also took hold of it, and that neither was able to release his hold until the controller was moved by a third person, the contention that the shock which caused death was not a momentary one, such as would have resulted from the contact of the signal wire and the feed wire, but a continuous one that must have been the result of an unexplained cause, and, therefore, that the court should have withdrawn the case from the jury on the ground that the cause of the accident was not shown, was wi