Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway Co. v. Loosley

Citations

• 76 Kan. 103
• 90 P. 990
• 1907 Kan. LEXIS 361

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Instructions — Defective Request for a Proper Instruction. If a defective request for an instruction actually brings to the attention of the court an important principle of law which ought to be stated to the jury in order that they may render an intelligent verdict, it may be prejudicial error to disregard it; and if an attempt be made by an instruction given to submit to the jury the matter defectively covered by the request it should be sufficiently explicit and comprehensive to cover fairly the field of the request.</p> <p>2. Master and Servant — Assumption of Risk. It is the duty of a master to make the conditions of his servant’s work reasonably safe. One of the conditions is that the servant be furnished with reasonably careful coservants. But if the master fail in the performance of this duty the servant, with knowledge of the facts and appreciation of the danger, may voluntarily accept the situation, and if he does so without complaint or promise of change the risk is assumed to the same extent as if it had originally entered into the contract of employment.</p> <p>3. -- Same. If upon complaint to the master that the conditions of the work are unsafe he refuses to better them, and the servant, understanding the danger, continues to work, he assumes the risk.</p> <p>4. -Same. If under the circumstances just stated injury befall the servant as a result of the defective conditions the question of what a reasonably prudent man would have done upon the master’s declination to remedy them is immaterial. If the servant in fact voluntarily chose to assume the risk of appreciated danger the prudence of his conduct is not open to investigation.</p> <p>5. -Independent Contractor. It is. not essential that one who engages a contractor to produce a given result should reserve, or should interfere and take, complete or exclusive control over all features of the work to render him liable as master of the contractor’s servants; but the f