Neri v. Atlantic Refining Co.

Citations

• 65 Pa. Super. 444
• 1917 Pa. Super. LEXIS 16

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Safe place to worlc — Notice to employer — Assumption of rish — Voluntary act to save another.</p> <p>Where an employee sees an obvious and dangerous defect in a runway on which he is obliged to work and calls his foreman’s attention to it, and the latter says that he will see that it is fixed, and the employee on going to his work two days afterward sees that nothing has been done to remedy the defect, but nevertheless resumes his work, and is injured by reason of the defect, he will be held to assume the risk, and cannot recover from his employer for the injury which he has sustained. In such a case it is immaterial that the injury was sustained by reason of the workman stopping his wheelbarrow on the decline of the runway in order to save another workman from injury.</p> <p>While one who voluntarily incurs peril caused by the negligence of another in order to save the life of one imperiled by the same negligence, is not debarred from recovery upon the ground of his own contributory negligence, such a right cannot be successfully urged where the plaintiff’s own testimony shows that the proximate cause of his injury was his voluntary act, independent of his duty to his employer, and without any negligence of the employer.</p>