Snodgrass v. Carnegie Steel Co.

Citations

• 173 Pa. 228
• 33 A. 1104
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 688

Syllabus

<p>[Marked to be reported.]</p> <p>Negligence — Fellow servants — Employment of unskillful workmen.</p> <p>Where a servant claims that an injury was caused to him by the negligence of an incompetent fellow servant, and that the master did not exercise proper care in the employment of the fellow servant, the burden is upon the person injured to showthat the master was negligent in selecting the servant who caused the injury.</p> <p>In an action by a servant against his master to recover damages for personal injuries where the plaintiff claims that the injury was caused by an incompetent fellow servant whom the master had negligently employed, the plaintiff in order that he may recover, must show by affirmative testimony (1) that the accident was the result of some negligent act or omission of the fellow servant; (2) that the fellow servant was incompetent for the duty he had to perform; (3) that the fact of his incompeteney was known to the defendant when he was employed by reason of the fellow servant having a reputation for incompetency, or that the defendant had knowledge of the incompetency during the employment and before the accident.</p> <p>Where the cause of the injury to the servant is a boiler explosion, and it is alleged that the engineer failed to maintain a proper elevation of water in the boilers, but the only witness examined on the subject states that he could not positively say what caused the explosion, the injured servant is not entitled to recover from the master, although there might be evidence of the incompetency of the engineer.</p> <p>A servant cannot recover from his master for an injury caused by a boiler explosion, on the ground that the master had knowledge of the incompetency of the engineer through whose negligence the accident was alleged to have been caused, where the only evidence of such knowledge were declarations of the plaintiff that he told the chief engineer that the engineer was incompetent, without any statement as to how or