Howland v. Standard Milling & Logging Co.

Citations

• 50 Wash. 34
• 96 P. 686
• 1908 Wash. LEXIS 659

Syllabus

<p>Master and Servant — Injuries to Servant — Negligence of Master — Evidence-—Sufficiency. It is negligence to remove one of the pulleys supporting a haul-back cable connected with a donkey engine used in hauling logs in the woods, thereby dropping the cable to the ground so that it caught on an obstruction, where it was known that it was the custom of the plaintiff, an employee attending the haul, to ride back on a sled pulled by the line, and that he would soon come within the zone of danger caused by taking away the support.</p> <p>Same — Fellow Servants — Vice Principals — Safe Place. In such case, the act of a co-laborer in taking away the support, by order of the foreman, is not the act of a fellow servant, but of a vice principal, since it was the master’s duty to provide a safe place to work, and the foreman and co-laborer both represented the master in removing the block.</p> <p>Same — Assumption of Risks — Contributory Negligence — Evidence — Sufficiency. In such a case the plaintiff’s contributory pegligence, and his assumption of risks, is for the jury, where he testified that he did not notice the changed conditions, and there is room for a reasonable difference of opinion.</p> <p>Same — Assumption oe Risks. A laborer in a logging camp riding on the bite of the cable line in front of the tail block, which practice was dangerous from the fact that the tail block might give way, does not assume the risk from other dangers caused by reason of the negligent taking away of a support of the line, unknown to him, where his injury was not caused by the tail block.</p> <p>Same — Customaby Methods. Where one is injured by the negligence of the master while pursuing his work in the customary way of doing the work, the accident not being the result of natural conditions, whether he ought to have adopted some other way is a question of fact for the jury and not of law for the court.</p>