Staebler v. Warren-Ehret Co.

Citations

• 223 Pa. 129
• 72 A. 554
• 1909 Pa. LEXIS 491

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Vice principal — Foreman—Safe place to work.</p> <p>1. A vice principal, for whose negligence an employer will be liable to other employees, must be either one in whom the employer has placed the entire charge of the business, or of a distinct branch of it, giving him not merely authority to superintend certain work or certain workmen but control of the business, and exercising no discretion or oversight of his own; or, secondly, one to whom he delegates a duty of his own which is a direct, personal and absolute obligation, from which nothing but performance can relieve him.</p> <p>2. The power to hire and discharge men is a circumstance to be considered in determining whether an employee is a vice principal, but the mere power to hire or discharge does not make a vice principal except as to the nondelegable duty of selecting competent servants.</p> <p>3. A mere authority to superintend a certain class of work or a certain party of men does not'make a vice principal.</p> <p>4. The duty to provide a safe place in which to work does not extend to the guarding of each place to which workmen may be sent to do a particular piece of work. The employer’s duty is performed by providing adequate means of making the place reasonably safe. He is not required to supervise the details of the work and he is not responsible for an error of judgment by a competent foreman who is in charge of the work.</p> <p>5. In an action against a roofing company to recover damages for death of a roofer, it appeared that the deceased was sent with other men under a foreman to put a tar roof on a car bam. The defendant had provided rubber shoes for the men, and guard rails to be fastened to the edge of the roof. The deceased started to put up the guard rails, but was stopped by the foreman who told him to go on with the work of laying the roof, that the roof was safe without guard rails, but that he would put them on after the first sheet of paper had been lai