Rodgers v. Lees

Citations

• 140 Pa. 475
• 21 A. 399
• 1891 Pa. LEXIS 861

Syllabus

<p>1. It is settled by abundant authority that, to enable a trespasser to recover for an injury, against the owner of the property he was trespassing upon, he must do more than show negligence: it must appear that there was a wanton or intentional injury inflicted on him by the property-owner : Gillespie v. McGowan, 100 Pa. 144.</p> <p>2. That a child of tender years may be a trespasser and be subject to the consequences of his trespass, so that it may preclude recovery for his injury or death even though negligence bo not imputable to him, lias been decided so often and in such varying circumstances that the question is no longer open to discussion.</p> <p>(а) The defendants maintained at their mill a hoisting apparatus operated by steam, consisting of a cable wound up and unwound by a drum projecting from the side of the mill over an adjoining street, and used for raising and lowering goods. At the end of the cable was an iron ball, and below that iron hooks for attaching the goods.</p> <p>(б) While the cable was in motion, though not in actual use for hoisting or lowering goods, a boy between six and seven years of age, who was upon the street, got on the ball with the intention and for the express purpose of riding up on it, in disregard of the warning of a companion. After riding up some distance he fell and was killed:</p> <p>3. As the death of the boy was caused solely by his own rash and reckless act, while in a place where he had not the least right to'be and where he was a trespasser in every sense of the word, there could be no recovery therefor: Hydraulic Works Co. v. Orr, 83 Pa. 332, distinguished, as authority only upon its own facts.</p>