Mathis v. Granger Brick & Tile Co.

Citations

• 85 Wash. 634
• 149 P. 3
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 1299

Syllabus

<p>Explosives — Injuries—Negligence—Question eor Jury. In an action by a minor child for injuries sustained from the explosion of a dynamite cap, there was sufficient evidence of defendant’s negligence to go to the jury, where it appears that a partly filled box of dynamite caps was found by boys in the soil pit of defendant’s brick yard, where they were used by defendant’s employees and were, from time to time, left for indefinite periods, and no one in particular of the employees was held responsible by the defendant for their care and custody; it being a reasonable and natural inference that the caps were where found as a result of the work in which they were used at that place, and through the agency of the men charged with the blasting.</p> <p>Same — Negligence — Intervening Cause — Question eor Jury. Where there is evidence sufficient for the jury as to defendant’s negligence in not safeguarding dynamite caps, which came into the possession of young boys, a question as to whether such negligence was the proximate cause of the injury to another child, or whether an independent, intervening, efficient factor relieved defendant from liability, is a question for the jury, where it appears that two boys of fourteen and thirteen years of age, who found the dynamite caps, carried them around in their pockets not knowing that they could be exploded in any other way than by a fuse, until by experience they learned otherwise, and it was doubtful whether they appreciated their dangerous character; that, in running and playing on the school grounds, a cap fell from the pocket of one of the boys, and was seen and picked up by plaintiff, a child of eleven years, who, not knowing what it was, carried it several days in the pocket of his overalls without showing it to any one; that in washing the overalls, his mother removed all the trinkets from the pockets, including the cap, which plaintiff took up and began picking the substance out with a hairpin, when it exploded, causi