Green v. Washington Oil Co.

Citations

• 216 Pa. 35
• 64 A. 877
• 1906 Pa. LEXIS 558

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Vice principal — Fellow servant.</p> <p>Where an oil company establishes a boiler repair works as a distinct branch of its business, and intrusts the sole charge of it to a superintendent, who hires and discharges workmen, and gives orders about the work to be done and repairs to be made, the superintendent is a vice principal of the company, and not a fellow servant of the workmen employed in the repair shop.</p> <p>In an action against an oil company by one of its workmen to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the explosion of a boiler under a testing process, it appeared that the boiler had been repaired in a repair shop of the defendant, and that after having been removed from the shop it had exploded while being tested. A witness for the plaintiff testified that before the boiler left the shop he directed the attention of the superintendent, who was the vice principal of the company, to the unsafe and dangerous condition of the crown sheet and stay bolts of the boiler. The superintendent replied that he thought them all right. This testimony was uncontradicted. There was evidence that during the test the pressure against the crown sheet caused the stay bolts to give way, and the explosion occurred as a result. There was no evidence that the plaintiff had any knowledge of the dangerous or defective condition of the boiler. Held, that the case was for the jury and that a verdict and judgment for plaintiff should be sustained.</p>