Ricks v. Flynn

Citations

• 196 Pa. 263
• 46 A. 360
• 1900 Pa. LEXIS 513

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Fellow-servant—Vice principal — Suitable appliances.</p> <p>It is the duty of a master to provide his servants with a safe place in which to work, with proper and suitable tools and machinery with which to perform their work, with suitable materials, with reasonably competent fellow-workmen with whom to work, and with 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 engaged.</p> <p>If.an employee be placed in a position to represent his employer so asp to have absolute control and entire charge of the work, or a distinct and separate branch of it, then, in the performance of his duties in such rep-1 resentative capacity, he takes the place of the employer, and his acts are'¡ those of his principal. An employer is likewise responsible for the acts of his employee if he entrusts him with the performance of an imperative duty absolutely obligatory upon the employer.</p> <p>The grade or rank of a servant for whose conduct the employer is sought to be made liable is not the test of the employer’s responsibility. It is the character or nature of the act of the employee which causes the Injury, that determines the liability of the employer. If the act or thing done resulting in the injury to the employee, is a duty imposed upon the employer, the negligent performance of it by an employee of any grade, will render the employer liable; but if such act was in the line of the ordinary workman’s duty as an employee, then the employer is not responsible although the offending employee was a vice principal in charge of the work generally.</p> <p>Where the foreman of a gang of workmen, even if he is assumed to be a vice principal under his general employment, undertakes the work of one of his gang, and so negligently performs it that another of his workmen is injured, he will be deemed a fellow-servant of the injured man, and his employer