Pennsylvania Co. v. Lynch

Citations

• 90 Ill. 333

Syllabus

<p>1. Negligence — as between master and servant—contributory negligence. In an action by a servant, against his employer, to recover damages for a personal injury caused by the use of defective machinery or materials employed in the business, the observance of due care and caution on the part of the servant is indispensable to his right to recover.</p> <p>2. While there is an implied contract between employer and employee, that the former shall procure and keep suitable tools, implements, means, etc., with which' to perform the labor required of the latter, and also that the latter shall be advised by the former of all the dangers incident to the service of which the latter is not cognizant, yet the failure of the employer in this regard furnishes no excuse for the conduct of the employee who voluntarily incurs a known danger. He must himself use due care and caution to avoid injury, and if he enters a service with full knowledge of its perils, without requiring that it first be made safe, he assumes the risk and must bear the consequences.</p> <p>3. Where a servant, employed in removing freight from one car into another, used a common car door made of pine boards, which was laid from one car door to another, and while taking down a bale of wool he and his fellow servant let the same fall upon a truck on the door, which caused the door to break, giving him a fall and inflicting a severe personal injury, when the proof showed that such servant had been engaged nearly two years in the business and had frequently before used such a door for a platform, and knew the danger in its use, and its defects, and the employer gave no direction to use such a platform, there being others in the yards of better construction and stronger materials which might have been used, and the employer not knowing that such a one was used at the time of the accident, and the servant never objected to the use of such platforms or suggested they be changed and others substituted, the negligenc