Prescott v. Ball Engine Co.

Citations

• 176 Pa. 459
• 35 A. 224
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 1099

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Tools and material — Fellow servant.</p> <p>The duly of an employer is to provide a safe place in which his employees may work, suitable tools and machinery to use while at work, reasonably competent fellow servants with whom to work, and such instruction to the young and inexperienced as may be necessary to warn them against the peculiar dangers incident to the kind of work in which they are to be engaged. He must also furnish them with suitable materials for use; but he is not liable to them for injuries due to their ineompotency or carelessness, or to the negligence or malice of their coemployees.</p> <p>The duty of an employee is to use his senses in all that relates to his employment, to exercise attention and care in the selection of materials from the mass provided for the general use, and in the manner of their general use, and to provide with reasonable- diligence for the safety of himself and his coemployees in his management of his own share of the work to be done.</p> <p>Master and servant — Fellow servant — Rigger and workman.</p> <p>A rigger in a works of a manufacturer of machinery whose duty it is to keep and maintain a suitable supply of ropes from which the workmen may select suitable and safe ropes for hoisting various pieces of machinery, is a vice principal, and not a fellow servant of the workmen.</p> <p>Negligence — Fellow servants — Defective ropes.</p> <p>In an action by an employee against his employer to recover damages for personal injuries, it appeared that the plaintiff was injured by the breaking of a defective rope used in hoisting a piece of machinery. The ropes were in charge of the rigger, whose duty it was to keep on hand a supply of ropes, some of which should be at all times suitable for use. It was not, however, the duty of the rigger to select the rope to be used on each occasion when a rope was wanted. The rope in use at the time of the accident had not been selected by the rigger, but by