Buehner Chair Co. v. Feulner

73 N.E. 816, 164 Ind. 368, 1905 Ind. LEXIS 39
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 15, 1905
DocketNo. 20,431
StatusPublished
Cited by38 cases

This text of 73 N.E. 816 (Buehner Chair Co. v. Feulner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Buehner Chair Co. v. Feulner, 73 N.E. 816, 164 Ind. 368, 1905 Ind. LEXIS 39 (Ind. 1905).

Opinion

Gillett, J.

This is a second appeal. See Buehner Chair Co. v. Feulner (1902), 28 Ind. App. 479. Under the paragraph of complaint upon which the canse was tried appellant was charged with negligently failing to' guard the bit, set-screw and journal of an upright boring machine. There was a verdict and a judgment for appellee. It appears from the evidence that said machine had for some weeks been used by appellee, as an employe of appellant, in its factory in Evansville1, in boring holes in pieces of wood designed to> be used in the backs of chairs. The bit, setscrew and journal were operated by steam, and revolved at the rate of 1,100 revolutions per minute. They were held up by a heavy spring which was attached to a joist above, so that the bottom of the bit was from six to seven inches above the platform of the machine, except as the appliance was temporarily lowered by the pressure of a foot of the operator upon a lever, which was beneath the platform. The material on, which appellee was working consisted of curved oak boards, twenty inches long and six inches wide. Nine holes were required to be bored in each. In boring these holes the board would be pushed from left to' right, and it was appellee’s practice, when the ninth hole was bored to take his foot off the lever, thus letting the journal, set-screw and bit ascend, as indicated, and to use both hands in passing the board out from under the bit and in placing it upon a pile upon the platform. This, owing to an obstructing guide, involved passing the left hand or arm beneath the bit. At the time in question, appellee, a boy of fifteen years, was pursuing this course, and it appears that his left arm came in contact with the bit, and he received a very serious injury.

Upon the former appeal the cause was reversed by the Appellate Court because of the uncertainty of the evidence as to the cause of the injury, and. for the further assigned reason that appellee was guilty of contributory negligence, the court observing that appellee had testified that he was [371]*371not looking at the bit when he received the injury, and that there was no need of his putting his arm or his hand under the bit. Upon the last trial it appeared very directly and clearly that the sleeve of appellee’s shirt was caught by the bit, or by the set-screw, -as he was removing the piece of wood, and that in that way his arm was brought in contact with the bit. Appellee explained his answer on the former trial that he “was not looking at the bit,” by the following statement: “I meant I wasn’t just looking directly at the bit. I was looking at all of it. I was looking to where I was going to put the piece of wood, and watching the bit as best I could.” Appellee offered evidence upon the last trial that he was taking out the chair back in the manner that the man who put him to work had removed the material in instructing him, and that he had seen the other men working at the machine in that way. He also testified to facts tending to show that the foreman had observed that the witness was taking out the pieces as indicated. Evidence was also introduced on his behalf to the effect that in removing the chair back from under the bit and from behind the guide it was necessary, in the proper performance of the work, to pass the left hand under the bit. The ground assigned by the witnesses for this opinion was that in handling a piece with one hand the material was more likely -to come in contact with the set-screw or bit, and to strike the operator in the face,

1. It is clear that with the additional evidence which was before the jury upon the last trial the question as to the legal sufficiency of the evidence as a whole is in nowise ruled, as the law of the case, by the decision of the Appellate Court upon .the former appeal. Dodge v. Gaylord (1876), 53 Ind. 365; Eckert v. Binkley (1893), 134 Ind. 614; 2 Van Fleet, Former Adjudication, p'. 1317.

2. When the surrounding physical circumstances are considered in connection with the direct testimony, it is very plain, under appellee’s theory of the case, that the bit [372]*372caused his injury, and that the defect in the machine consisted in the absence of a guard. Eegarding the evidence as a whole1, we are of the opinion that the question as to whether appellee was guilty of contributory negligence was a question for the jury. Here the triers of the fact had before them not only, the direct testimony as to how the accident occurred, but they also had a description of the machine and of its workings, and the testimony of witnesses as to whether the manner in which appellee was operating it was proper. The fact of appellee’s comparative immaturity, and that his teaching and observation as to the use of the machine were calculated to influence his judgment, were circumstances proper to be considered in determining whether he was negligent.

3. It was said by Mr. Justice Hunt, in discussing the question as to when negligence is a question for the jury: “Hpon the facts proved in such cases, it is a matter of judgment and discretion, of sound inferencei, what is the- deduction to be drawn from the undisputed facts. Certain facts we may suppose to be clearly established from which one sensible, impartial man would infer that proper care had not been used, and that negligence existed; another man equally sensible and equally impartial would infer that proper care had been used, and that there was no negligence. It is this class of cases and those akin to it that the law commits to the decision of a jury. Twelve men of the average of the community, comprising men of education and .men of little education, men of learning and men whose learning consists only in what they have themselves seen and heard, the merchant, the mechanic, the farmer, the laborer ; these sit together, consult, apply their, separate experience of the affairs of life to the facts proved, and draw a unanimous conclusion. This average judgment thus given .it is the great effort of the law to obtain. It is- assumed that twelve men. know more of the common affairs of life than does one man; that they can draw wiser and safer con[373]*373elusions from admitted facts thus occuring, than can a single judge.” Railroad Co. v. Stout (1873), 17 Wall. 657, 21 L. Ed. 745.

In Finegan v. London, etc., R. Co. (1889), 53 J. P. 663, it appears that Denman, J., indulged in the following observations, upon an appeal wherein the Queen’s Bench reversed Lord Coleridge in a negligence case, in which he had nonsuited the plaintiff: “I think to make questions of law out of what aré in their real nature questions of fact for a jury does harm and not good, and it tends to unsettle the law rather than to settle it, and I am confirmed in that view, I think, by that which is certainly an undoubted but deplorable fact, that whenever questions of negligence are argued and put forward as questions of pure law then the difficulty arises, and in most cases they divide judges of great experience and great acuteness more than any other questions which have ever been discussed in courts of justice.”

It is only where there is dispute as to the controlling facts, and no room for different conclusions upon the part of reasonable minds as to the question of contributory negligence, that it becomes a question of law for the court. Town of Albion v. Hetrick (1883), 90 Ind. 545, 46 Am. Rep. 230; Mann v. Belt R., etc., Co. (1891), 128 Ind. 138; Baltimore, etc., R. Co. v. Walborn (1891), 127 Ind. 142; Cincinnati, etc., R. Co. v. Grames (1893), 136 Ind.

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Bluebook (online)
73 N.E. 816, 164 Ind. 368, 1905 Ind. LEXIS 39, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/buehner-chair-co-v-feulner-ind-1905.