Rummel v. Dilworth, Porter & Co.

Citations

• 131 Pa. 509
• 19 A. 345
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1137

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported.]</p> <p>1. While an employee, as a general rule, must be held to have assumed, when he entered upon an employment, the risks which are incident to it, yet he has a right to expect that its dangers will be pointed out to him, and that he will be instructed in those things he should know in order to provide for his own safety.</p> <p>2. In the ease of young persons employed, it is the duty of their employers to take notice of their age and ability, and to use ordinary care to protect them from risks which they cannot properly appreciate, and to which in the course of their employment they should not; be exposed.</p> <p>(a) A youth about seventeen years of age, and but lately engaged in an. iron mill, was employed in one duty, but was injured while permitted to perform a different duty properly to be discharged by another employee, and dangerous because of the absence of sufficient protective appliances:</p> <p>3. In such case, it was necessarily a question of fact for the jury whether his employer had sufficiently warned and instructed him as to the dangers of the employment and how to avoid them, or had done all that was reasonably necessary to protect him: Rummel v. Dilworth, 111 Pa. 313.</p> <p>4. Moreover, the scope of the duty within which the employee was entitled to protection, was to be defined by what he was employed to perform, and what with the knowledge and approval of his employer he did perform, rather than by the verbal designation of his position in the mill.</p>