Le Claire v. Washington Water Power Co.

Citations

• 83 Wash. 560
• 145 P. 584
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 712

Syllabus

<p>Master and Servant — Safe Place to Work — Negligence—Hazardous Employment — Obvious Dangers. It is not negligence on the part of a master in failing to supply a safe place to work, rendering him liable for the death of an employee, in that he required the latter to work in a rowboat upon a stream impounded by a dam with spillways rendering the current swift, which was in places unsafe for a rowboat, where it was safe in the places where the men were required to work, if they used ordinary care, and where the danger was as open and apparent to the employee as to the master.</p> <p>Same — Hazardous Employment — Assumption oe Risk — Skill of Employee — Representations to Master. Where an employee of mature years undertakes to perform a service in a hazardous employment, representing that he had had experience, the dangers of which are open and apparent, he impliedly represents that he has sufficient skill to perform the service, and the employer is not liable to him for an injury resulting merely because he overestimated his qualifications.</p> <p>Same — Duty op Master — Safe Appliances — Knowledge of Servant. In an action for the death of an employee resulting from loss of control of a rowboat occasioned by the slipping of an oarlock, the fact that the boat furnished by the employer was fragile and light, being a Mullin’s steel boat, would not render the master liable, where it appears that it was a boat in common use, with no structural defects, that the employee was as cognizant of its strength or frailty as the employer, and that the slipping of the oarlock from its socket was the result not of the insufficient strength of the boat to stand the strain but of the manipulation of the oar.</p> <p>Same — Usual Appliances. The failure to fasten the oarlocks in their sockets so as to prevent their coming out by reason of faulty manipulation of the oars cannot he charged as negligence on the part of the employer, where it was usual and customary to leave the oarlocks u