Prevost v. Citizens' Ice & Refrigerating Co.

Citations

• 185 Pa. 617
• 40 A. 88
• 1898 Pa. LEXIS 759

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Fellow-servant rule — Vice principal.</p> <p>A vice principal for whose negligence an employer will be liable to other employees must be either, first, one in whom the employer has placed the entire charge of the business, or of a distinct branch of it, giving him not mere authority to superintend certain work or certain work- I men but control of the business, and exercising no discretion or oversight of his own, or, secondly, one to whom he delegates a duty of his own ' which is a direct, personal and absolute obligation, from which nothing j but performance can relieve him.</p> <p>A chief engineer who has general charge of an engine room and a department, with power to give orders to the men in the department, and to engage men for short jobs in the manager’s absence, is not a vice principal, but a foreman, and, as such, a fellow-servant of the men employed in the department.</p> <p>Where an employer himself assumes control and gives an express order not only what to do, but how to do it, even a vice principal is bound to obey, and becomes for the time being a mere co-employee, whatever his general authority may be under other circumstances ; and the employer is not bound personally to supervise the doing of the work, but is entitled to assume that his orders will be carried out.</p>