A. L. Clark Lumber Co. v. St. Coner

133 S.W. 1132, 97 Ark. 358, 1911 Ark. LEXIS 43
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedJanuary 23, 1911
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 133 S.W. 1132 (A. L. Clark Lumber Co. v. St. Coner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
A. L. Clark Lumber Co. v. St. Coner, 133 S.W. 1132, 97 Ark. 358, 1911 Ark. LEXIS 43 (Ark. 1911).

Opinion

Hart, J.

Appellant prosecutes this appeal to reverse a judgment against it in favor of appellee for damages received by him while in the employ of appellant and alleged to have been sustained on account of the negligence of appellant.

In June, 1909, appellee was employed at the sawmill of appellant as off-bearer, that is he bore slabs away from the saw. The mill was shut down, and the mill foreman told appellee to lower the shafting. This was done by unscrewing the bars from the bolts and lifting the bolts off. While engaged in unscrewing the nuts, he stood on a plank two inches thick by ten inches wide. The plank.was resting on the beams which cross the mill. The beams were twelve by twelve inches. The planks were on a level, were laid lengthwise, and were 14 feet from the floor. They were supposed to meet on the heavy timbers. Appellee had taken all the nuts off except one; and when he went to step on the. plank that runs along for a man to walk on, it dropped out from under him, and appellee fell to the floor, his feet striking first. 'There was fine sawdust and filings on the plank which fell with appellee from about one-half to one inch thick. Appellee states that this was his first trip up to the slasher scaffold. That be did not put the planks there, and does not know who did. That he does not know how many were laid across the joists. That they were not nailed to the joists. Appellee states that he discovered this fact by examination made sometime after he was injured, but also states that it was not customary to nail the planks to the joists. That he was doing this work at the ■direction of his foreman.

The foreman also testified that he was present and directing appellee about his work when he fell. That he was on a scaffold up under the slasher unscrewing some nuts, and while so engaged the scaffold gave way, and he fell to the floor about 14 feet. That the plank which fell with him was already there and was not placed there by appellee. Appellee also adduced evidence tending to show the character and extent of his injuries, and that they were permanent. No complaint is made that _ the verdict is excessive, and it is not therefore necessary to more particularly describe the extent of appellee’s injuries.

Appellant adduced evidence tending to show that the plank or scaffold which gave way with appellee and caused him to fall was not there when he began the work, but was placed there by himself.

It is first insisted by counsel for appellant that the judgment should be reversed because the court erred in giving the following instruction:

“While it is true that the plaintiff assumed all the risks that were ordinarily incident to the service in which he was engaged, yet he did not assume the risk of any negligence on the part of the defendant or employees. In the absence of knowledge on his part, the plaintiff had the right to presume that the defendant had performed the duties that devolved upon it. One of the duties imposed upon the defendant by law was to exercise ordinary care to provide a reasonably safe scaffold for the plaintiff to work on. A master is bound to exercise ordinary care in .furnishing a safe place to his servant to work on, whether it is of a simple character, or whether it is dangerously situated. Therefore, if you find from the evidence that the plaintiff’s injury was caused by the unsafe scaffold furnished by the defendant on whicih to work, and that plaintiff did not know of its unsafe condition, you will find for the plaintiff.”

They contend that this instruction “ignores altogether the question of whether appellant was negligent in furnishing appellee an unsafe scaffold, and places liability on appellant merely on proof that appellee’s injury was caused by the unsafe scaffold.” That “it is framed in a recital form, so that the conclusion of the instruction is erroneous in assuming that the scaffold was unsafe.” It will be noted, however, that the first part of the instruction told the jury that appellant was only required to exercise ordinary care to provide a reasonably safe scaffold for appellee to work on. Moreover, the court gave numerous instructions at the request of appellant, and in fact gave all instructions asked for by appellant except two, which will be noticed hereafter. In these instructions the jury was told that no presumption of negligence arose from the happening of the accident; that appellee must prove that his injury resulted from the negligence of the appellant, and that such negligence was the proximate cause of the injury; that the appellant only owed the duty to exercise ordinary care to provide a reasonably safe place for appellee to work. The doctrines of assumed risk and of contributory negligence were fully covered; the jury were told that if appellee placed the plank or scaffold which fell under him, he could not recover, and the instructions, when considered as a whole, covered every phase of the case, and were so complete that we can not see how the jury could have been misled by the language in the latter part of the instruction. There was only one disputed question of fact in the case, and that was whether the appellee provided his own scaffold, or whether it was already there when the foreman directed him to unscrew the nuts. From the instructions given at the request of appellant, it is perfectly apparent that, had the court’s attention been directly called to the defect in the latter part of the instruction, such defect would have been corrected.

In the case of St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Rogers, 93 Ark. 564, the court recognized the rule of this court that where instructions are conflicting and it is impossible for an appellate court to tell which of them the jury followed, the judgment should be reversed, but said: “There are, however, cases, as we conceive, not inconsistent with this rule, where we have held that the law of the case can not be stated in one paragraph or instruction, and that, though the instructions given may be apparently conflicting, if from the language used or the relation which the instructions are made by the whole charge to bear toward each other it is readily seen that they are to be read together without conflict and as a harmonious whole, and they can be so read, then it is our duty to so treat them.” To the same effect: Kruse v. St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co., ante p. 137.

When tested by this rule in the light of the facts and circumstances in this case as detailed above, we fail to see how any prejudice could have resulted to appellant. See, also, St. Louis, 1. M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Barnett, 65 Ark. 255, 259, that a general objection was insufficient. The court held:

“The giving of an instruction to the effect that it is the duty of a railroad company to keep its station platform in safe condition for the use of passengers is not cause for reversal where no specific objection was taken to the court’s failure to limit or explain the meaning of the term ‘safe.’ ”

2. Counsel for appellant insist that the court erred in refusing t’he following instruction:

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Bluebook (online)
133 S.W. 1132, 97 Ark. 358, 1911 Ark. LEXIS 43, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/a-l-clark-lumber-co-v-st-coner-ark-1911.