Spisak v. Balt. & Ohio R. R.

Citations

• 152 Pa. 281
• 25 A. 497
• 1893 Pa. LEXIS 969

Syllabus

<p>[Marked to be reported.]</p> <p>Railroads — Negligence—Fellow servants — Act of April 4, 1868.</p> <p>Under the act of April-4, 1868, P. L. 58, if the place of an accident where a person is injured is clearly and for general purposes the “ roads, works, depots or premises ” of the railroad company, the person injured is a fellow servant of the employees of the railroad company within the meaning of the act, if he is lawfully engaged or employed on or about them and is not a passenger.</p> <p>If the accident occurs in a place which is not exclusively but only within a limited and statutory sense the premises of the company, and the person injured is engaged in work which it is ordinarily the duty of railroad employees to do, he is a quasi employee within the meaning of the act. But if the work has no relation to railroad work as such and is connected with the railroad only by irrelevant and immaterial circumstances of locality, the case is not within the statute.</p> <p>Plaintiff was the brakeman of a locomotive belonging to a steel company which owned two spur tracks connecting its works with the defendant’s lines. After the railroad company had delivered a car and after the car had been unloaded, plaintiff, at the direction of the yard boss of the steel company, moved the car from the receiving track to the scales, to take its light weight. While doing so he was injured through the negligence of one of defendant’s employees. Held, that the intermediate unloading, shifting and weighing of the car was the work of the steel company on its own land, that the connection of the railroad company with the place of the accident by reason of its joint use of the tracks for other purposes was immaterial, and that plaintiff was neither an employee in fact, nor doing work which made him a quasi employee under the statute.</p>