Daurizio v. Merchants Despatch Transportation Co.

152 Misc. 716, 274 N.Y.S. 174, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1632
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 12, 1934
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 152 Misc. 716 (Daurizio v. Merchants Despatch Transportation Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Daurizio v. Merchants Despatch Transportation Co., 152 Misc. 716, 274 N.Y.S. 174, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1632 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1934).

Opinion

Knapp, J.

This action is brought by the plaintiff against the defendant to recover damages from it by reason of certain acts set forth in the plaintiff’s complaint.

The complaint of the plaintiff contains six alleged causes of action, to wit, negligence, nuisance, breach of contract, fraud, violation of statute, misfeasance of the defendant.

The allegation of negligence sets forth the fact that the relation of master and servant existed between the plaintiff and this defendant; that the plaintiff worked for the defendant, and that by reason of the failure of the defendant to provide him a safe place to work, safe tools and appliances, and reasonable regulations, this plaintiff suffered injury. Damages are sought against the defendant for that injury. No attack is made upon this alleged cause of action.

The defendant, however, is now moving against the other causes of action set forth in the plaintiff’s complaint, upon the ground that they do not allege facts sufficient to constitute the causes of action sought to be alleged, and, in the alternative, that certain causes of action should be set aside on the ground they are redundant repetitious, unnecessary and immaterial.

The pleader in the second cause of action has attempted to set forth a cause of action based upon a nuisance. The plaintiff was employed to work for the defendant at its factory, and the alleged acts by which this plaintiff seeks to recover damages against the defendant were acts arising out of the employment of the plaintiff by the defendant, and were within the buildings owned or operated by the defendant.

There are two forms of nuisance, private and public. A private nuisance has been defined by Blackstone as “ anything done to the hurt or annoyance of the lands, tenements and hereditaments of another.” (3 Black. Comm. 215.) Mr. Cooley, in the third edition of his work on Torts, volume 2, page 1174, enlarges upon this definition as follows: By hurt or annoyance here is meant, not a physical injury necessarily, but an injury to the owner or possessor thereof, as respects his dealing with, possessing or enjoying them.”

This rule has been adopted and applied by the courts of this State. (Kavanagh v. Barber, 131 N. Y. 211; Heeg v. Licht, 80 id. 579.)

There is no claim made in this action that this plaintiff either owned the property in which he worked or had any right to possession of any part thereof. He was simply an employee of the defendant.

In the case of Kavanagh v. Barber (supra) the court held that there was sufficient evidence to justify the jury in finding that certain fumes from the defendant’s manufacturing establishment [718]*718tainted the air of the neighborhood and penetrated into the house in which plaintiff was living with his family. The house, however, was owned by the plaintiff’s wife, in which the plaintiff had no legal interest. In an action brought by him for damages by reason of acts of the defendant the court held that he had no right of action against the defendant, and, in the course of its opinion, said: “ The principle upon which the judgment proceeds, if sustained, will greatly extend the class of actionable nuisances. We have found no case where a private action has been maintained for corruption of the air by offensive odors, except by a plaintiff who was the owner of, or had some legal interest, as lessee or otherwise, in land, the enjoyment of which was affected by the nuisance.”

The same doctrine was held in the case of Hughes v. City of Auburn (161 N. Y. 96).

Plaintiff’s injuries are alleged to have occurred on the same premises where the nuisance is alleged to have existed. A private nuisance involves the existence on one property of a dangerous condition which is a hazard or annoyance to another property.

A nuisance is public only when it hazards or annoys the public-at-large or a large number of the public as distinguished from a determinate number of persons. (People v. Transit Development Company, 131 App. Div. 174.)

It becomes actionable in a civil action for damages only when a member of the public-at-large, so hazarded, receives some special damage. (Close v. Whitbeck, 126 App. Div. 544.)

The plaintiff herein makes no allegation that the defendant’s plant was a public place, nor that the hazard of the nuisance on defendant’s property extended to a public street or place, nor that the plaintiff was exposed to the hazard of a nuisance as a member of the public-at-large.

An employer’s liability for injury to bis employees by reason of a dangerous condition upon the premises is founded on negligence, and results from the violation of the employer’s duty to provide his employees with a reasonably safe place in which to work.

The cases are practically uniform that actions for nuisance, either public or private, must be justified only on the one theory or the other; that is to say, in the cases which have proceeded upon the theory of nuisance, the plaintiff either had a property right in premises adjoining the property on which the nuisance existed, or the plaintiff was a member of the public-at-large, and was injured by reason of a nuisance which was a hazard to the public. No authority in this State has been submitted to me in which an action for a nuisance has been brought by an employee against an employer for alleged acts of the employer committed within the confines of his plant. This cause of action cannot be sustained.

[719]*719The plaintiff in his third cause of action sets forth a breach of a civil contract. It is alleged that the plaintiff and the defendant entered into an agreement by which agreement the defendant agreed to employ the plaintiff and to furnish him with a safe and suitable apparatus and a safe place to work, and to pay the plaintiff an agreed amount for his services; and that the plaintiff accepted the employment for a good and valuable consideration and continued in such employment and performed all the conditions of the agreement. It then alleges a breach of the terms of the contract on the part of the defendant, and seeks to recover damages therefor. The relationship of master and servant may, and most frequently does, exist by simple mutual agreement that the servant is to labor for the master. In such case the law holds that the terms of the contract are not fully expressed, and that there exist by implication reciprocal rights and obligations on the part of each, which it will protect and enforce as fully as if expressed by the parties. (Bailey Master’s Liability and Injuries to Servant, 1.)

Among the implied obligations resting upon the master are the following:

1. That he shall provide suitable means and appliances to enable the servant to do his work as safely as the hazards incident to the employment will permit. (Fuller v. Jewett, 80 N. Y. 46.)

2. That he will provide a suitable and reasonably safe place for the doing of the work to be performed by the servant. (Flike v. Boston & Albany R. R. Co., 53 N. Y. 549.)-

3. Providing of other servants when the circumstances require it, sufficient in number and reasonably skillful and competent for the performance of the service so that the servant may not be exposed to unnecessary risk or peril from unskillful or incompetent workmen or servants, or from a lack of a sufficient number of them. (Flike v.

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Bluebook (online)
152 Misc. 716, 274 N.Y.S. 174, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1632, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/daurizio-v-merchants-despatch-transportation-co-nysupct-1934.