Casey v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co.

202 F. 1, 120 C.C.A. 243, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 987
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 3, 1913
DocketNo. 2,161
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 202 F. 1 (Casey v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Casey v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co., 202 F. 1, 120 C.C.A. 243, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 987 (9th Cir. 1913).

Opinion

ROSS, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). An act of the Legislature of the state of Washington approved March 6, 1905 (Laws 1905, c. 84), as amended by an act passed in 1907 (Laws 1907, c. 205), provides:

“That any person, firm, corporation, or association, operating a factory, mill, or workshop where machinery is used, shall provide and maintain in use * * * reasonable safe-guards for all vats, pans, trimmers, cut-off, gang edger, and other saws, planers, cogs, gearings, belting, shafting, coupling, set screws, live rollers, conveyors, mangles in laundries and machinery of other or similar description, which it is practicable to guard, and which can be effectively guarded with due regard to the ordinary use of such machinery and appliances, and the dangers to employSs therefrom, and with which the employes of any such factory, mill, or workshop are liable to come in contact while in the performance of their duties. ⅜ ⅜ * ”

Section 2 of the act of .1905 provides that:

“Every factory,' mill, or workshop where machinery is used and manual labor exercised by the way of trade for purposes of gain, within an enclosed room * ⅜ * shall be provided in each workroom thereof with good and sufficient ventilation,” etc.

Section 3 of the act of 1905 provides that:

“The openings of all hoistways, hatchways, elevators, and well-holes and stairways in factories, mills, workshops, storehouses, warerooms, or stores, shall be protected where practicable by good and sufficient trapdoors, hatches, fences, gates, or other safeguards,” etc.

[4]*4Section 4 of the act of 1905, as amended by section 2 of the act of 1907, provides that it shall be the duty of the Commiss«i?er of Labor, annually and from time to time, to examine all factories, mills, workshops, warehouses, warerooms, stores and buildings, and machinery and appliances therein contained to which the provisions of the act are applicable.

Section 5 of the act of 1905, as amended by section 3 of the act of 1907, provides that:

“Any person, firm, corporation, or association carrying on business to wbi cli the provisions this act are applicable, shall have the right to make written request to said Commissioner of Labor to inspect any factory, mill or workshop, and the machinery therein used, and any storehouse, wareroom or store, which said applicant is operating. * * * ”

Section 6 of the act of 1905 provides that the employe of any person, firm, corporation, or association shall notify his employer of any defect or other failure to guard the machinery, appliances, ways, works, and plants with which or in‘and about which he is working, and that the employé may complain to the Commissioner of Labor of any such defects or failure to guard such machinery.

'■Section 7 of the act of 1905, as amended by section 4 of the act of 1907, provides that whenever, upon examination or re-examination of any factory, mill, or workshop, store or building, or the machinery or appliances therein to which the provisions of the act are applicable, the property so examined and .the machinery and appliances therein conform in the judgment of the Commissioner of Labor to the requirements of the act, he shall issue a certificate, etc.; that a copy of the certificate shall be kept posted in a conspicuous place on every floor of all factories, mills, workshops, storehouses, warerooms, or stores to which the provisions of the act are applicable, and that, if the provisions of the act have not been complied with, the Commissioner of Labor shall notify the person operating the mill, factory, or workshop of that fact.

The sole question presented and argued by counsel in this court is whether the plant in question was a “factory, mill, or workshop” within the meaning of the above-mentioned legislation of the state of Washington. The court below held that it was not, for the reason that the plant was not located in a permanent building, and should be likened to a threshing machine, a steam shovel, a wrecking car, and other similar machines and appliances, and to the small concrete and asphalt mixers which are frequently seen in use upon the streets of cities and towns. We are unable to take that view of this plant. That it was built and operated for the purpose of manufacturing out of crude material the finished product with which the defendant company paved streets and roads is not denied. It is true that it was not manufactured in any sort of a house, but we do not understand that a house is an absolutely essential element of either a factory or a mill. It is, of course, readily conceded that a factory usually and perhaps almost invariably embraces one or more buildings, and, where machinery constitutes a part of the factory, such machinery is undoubtedly usually housed; but even at common law the factory is not [5]*5limited to the building or buildings, but includes as well the premises- or place where its operations are carried on.

In Black’s Law Dictionary the word “factory” is thus defined:

' “In the English law the term includes all buildings or premises wherein, or within the close or curtilage of which, steam, water, or any mechanical power is used to move or.work any machinery employed in preparing, manufacturing, or finishing cotton, wool, hair, silk, hemp, or tow. Later this definition was extended to other manufacturing places.”

The statute of Massachusetts defines factory as “any premises where steam, water, or other mechanical power is used in the aid of any manufacturing process there carried on.” Revised Laws of Massachusetts ' 1902, p. 916, c. 106, § 8.

A similar definition is contained in the statutes of Kansas of 1901 (section 6650), in the Annotated Revised Statutes of Missouri (1906, section 10104), and in the General Statutes of Minnesota of 1894 (section 2264). In 26 Cyc. p. 531, it is said, among other things, that:

“Various establishments have been held to be factories or manufactories under certain statutes, and the statutory meaning is sometimes wider than the common definition.”

See, also, 26 Cyc. p. 530, and numerous cases there cited.

The real question here is, What is the meaning of the words “factory, mill, or workshop,” as used in the above cited statute of the state of Washington? Among the definitions given by Webster of the word “mill” is:

“A common name for various machines which produce a manufactured product, or change the form of raw material by continuous repetition of some action, as a saw mill, a stamp mill, etc.”

The title of the act of the state of Washington of March 6, 1905, as well as many of its provisions, are substantially the same as that of the preceding Factory Act of the state entitled “An act providing for the protection of employes in factories, mills, or workshops where machinery is used” (Laws of Washington 1903, p. 40), concerning which prior act the Supreme Court of the state said, in the case of Ward v. National Lumber & Box Co., 54 Wash. 307, 103 Pac. 2:

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202 F. 1, 120 C.C.A. 243, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 987, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/casey-v-barber-asphalt-paving-co-ca9-1913.