O'Brien v. Page Lumber Co.

Citations

• 39 Wash. 537
• 82 P. 114
• 1905 Wash. LEXIS 897

Syllabus

<p>Master and Servant—Negligence—Employment oe Incompetent Fellow Servants—Notice oe Incompetency. There is no evidence upon which to submit to the jury an issue as to the negligence of the owner of a mill in employing an incompetent sawyer, where it appears that he was competent at the time he was employed; and that the employer had no knowledge of his becoming incompetent by reason of the use of intoxicating liquors, as alleged.</p> <p>Same—Vice Principal and Fellow Servants—Sawyer in Control oe One oe His Crew—Safe Place—Duty to Warn oe Agency Rendering Place Unsafe. A sawyer in control of a saw crew, while a fellow servant with the members of the crew in respect to their labor in working together in the common employment of converting logs into lumber, is nevertheless a vice principal as to the duty to give warning of his operation of the machinery, where it appears that the men were bound to obey his orders, that he ordered the plaintiff, a dogger, to remove a log from the head-block where it had been lodged by the operation of the nigger, a powerful machine under his control, and that, while the dogger was so engaged, with his hack to the sawyer, the sawyer, without warning, operated the machinery and applied the nigger to the log at a time when it was evident that the plaintiff’s position would thereby be rendered extremely dangerous, and from which injury to him resulted; since after ordering the servant into a dangerous position, it was the duty of the master to keep the place safe and to warn the servant of the use of an agency by the master which would render such place unsafe; the sawyer’s negligence in respect to such warning being the act of a vice principal, the peril of which was known to him as such, and unknown to the servant, and being the negligence that rendered the place unsafe.</p>