Wolk v. Smith

Citations

• 56 Wash. 33
• 105 P. 138
• 1909 Wash. LEXIS 841

Syllabus

<p>Master and Servant — Assumption or Risks — Promise to Repair — Vice Principals — Evidence—Sufficiency. A timekeeper or clerk, who gave a promise to repair a chain, during the absence of the general foreman, was not a superintendent or vice principal as to the plaintiff, a stone mason, who was injured by the breaking of the chain, where it appears from plaintiff’s evidence that one A. was the general foreman, that when A. was absent there was no one to give orders to the plaintiff, who was foreman of his derrick crew, although he stated that when A. was away the clerk took his place and was “timekeeper and foreman the way I called him,” and where the other evidence showed that the clerk was merely a timekeeper in charge of the accounts and supplies and had no part in the work nor any authority over it or the tools, that when a chain was broken (which happened frequently) the men got a new one or repairs from the blacksmith or used a cold-shut, on their own motion or by direction of the plaintiff, and that plaintiff and the clerk each had authority to hire men in the absence of the general foreman; hence the plaintiff cannot avoid the assumption of xúsks from the use of a defective chain upon the clerk’s promise to repair the same (Fullerton, J., dissenting).</p>