Pennsylvania Co. v. Backes

Citations

• 133 Ill. 255
• 24 N.E. 563

Syllabus

<p>1. Master and servant—whether the relation exists. A person employed by a mill company to assist in moving railway ears on a scale platform, and in unloading grain therefrom into the sheds of the mill company, and who is injured while so engaged, by the negligence of a railway company, is not the servant of the latter company, and the rule protecting the master from liability for the ordinary risks of the service has no application.</p> <p>2. ' Same—risks of the service. If a servant, knowing the hazards of his employment as the business is conducted, is injured while engaged therein, he can not maintain an action against the master for the injury, merely on the ground that there was a safer mode in which the business might have been conducted, the adoption of which would have prevented the injury.</p> <p>3. Same—care required of the master. Vet while it is true that a servant undertaking to work for a corporation on its side-tracks, used also by a railway company, assumes all the risks of injury which exist while the business is carried on in the usual and ordinary way, yet the master, and those acting under him, owe the servant a duty not to injure him recklessly or through gross negligence. They should conduct their business with reasonable caye in respect to the safety of their servant.</p> <p>4. Negligence—duty of railway company using a private track. A railway company in the use of a private track from its road to a mill, by pushing cars of grain to the mill to be there unloaded by the servants of the mill owners, owes such servants, while moving the cars on such track and unloading the same, the duty to exercise ordinary care to prevent injury to them.</p> <p>5. General verdict — evidence sustaining one of several counts. Where there is a general verdict under a declaration containing several counts, it will be sufficient if the evidence sustains any one of the counts.</p> <p>6. In an action to recover for injury resulting from the alleged negligence of t