Swartz v. Bergendahl-Knight Co.

Citations

• 259 Pa. 421
• 103 A. 220
• 1918 Pa. LEXIS 428

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Master and servant — Defective scaffold — Fall of workman — Safe place to work — Employer’s duty to inspect and repair- — Delegation of duty- — Foreman—Vice-principal—Obvious danger — Assumption of risk — Contributory negligence — Case for jury.</p> <p>1. A scaffold is a place to work and in the erection thereof the employer is providing’ a place to work, and if, through failure of duty to make it reasonably safe, an injury results to another, he is responsible.</p> <p>2. It is the duty of the employer not only to furnish safe timbers for a scaffold and to have it properly constructed, but also to maintain it in reasonably safe condition by inspection and repair.</p> <p>3. An employee must know the circumstances and appreciate the risk before he will be held to have assumed it. He is not equally bound with his employer to know whether appliances are reasonably safe and in ordinary use and does not assume the risk upon the employer’s failure to provide such as are proper.</p> <p>4. In an action against a construction company to recover for the death of plaintiff’s husband occasioned by thé breaking of a scaffold upon which he was working while in defendant’s employ, the case was for the jury and a verdict and judgment for plaintiff will be sustained where it appeared that the scaffold had been erected by other men in defendant’s employ about two or three weeks prior to the accident, which occurred on the first day deceased worked on the building and about an hour after he began work; that the timber used in the broken beam was defective in not being sufficiently large for the purpose of carrying the weight for which it was intended, that it contained wind-ghakes or cracks and numerous knots, many of which extended entirely through the timber and Could be seen externally before and after the accident, and that they weakened the beam and thereby diminished its carrying capacity; and that no inspection of the scaffold had been made subsequent to its cons