Tunney v. Carnegie Bros.

Citations

• 146 Pa. 618
• 23 A. 207
• 1892 Pa. LEXIS 1269

Syllabus

<p>(a) In an action against an employer, to recover damages for the death of an employee, who, as was claimed, while walking across an underground flue connecting the furnace of a battery of boilers with a brick stack, fell into a hole that suddenly appeared in the top of the flue and was burned to death, uncontradicted testimony tended to show:</p> <p>(b) That the flue was strongly built, and was arched over with four courses of brick, the two lower courses being of the best fire-brick; that the arch was capable of bearing a heavy weight; that the life of such a flue was not less than eighteen months, and this one was about six months old, and had been inspected about three months before:</p> <p>1. No witness being called to condemn, as unsafe and insufficient, the plan on which the flue was constructed, and there being no proof that the defendant had omitted any safeguard ordinarily employed upon flues constructed like the one in question, there was not sufficient evidence of negligence to submit to the jury.</p> <p>2. The jury could not infer negligence from proof that in other mills a wrought-iron plate was used to cover flues, as a safeguard against such accidents, when there was no evidence as to how the flues so covered were constructed; nor could they infer it upon the simple fact of the appearance of the hole in the flue, from an unexplained cause.</p>