Fifield v. Northern Railroad

42 N.H. 225

• Court: Supreme Court of New Hampshire
• Decided: December 15, 1860
• Status: Published

Opinion

Doe, J.

The gist of the declaration is, that by reason of the defendant corporation negligently permitting its road to be blocked with snow and ice and a car to be out of repair, the plaintiff, a servant of the defendants, employed as a brakeman, was injured.

If the railroad were owned by one individual, and he should personally assume the duty of examining and repairing the road and the cars, and through his negligence in not repairing, or in imperfectly repairing them, a brakeman employed by him should be injured, the employer • would be liable. And if the employer did not attend to the repairs himself, and if ordinary care and prudence required that one or more persons should be constantly engaged in making repairs, and the employer, through gross negligence, did not employ any, or a sufficient number of repair-men, or negligently employed unskillful ones, and a brakeman, not knowing this fact, and being in no fault for not knowing it, and being chargeable with no negligence or fault whatever, were injured, solely in consequence of such negligence of his employer, the employer would be liable. In such case, the master would be held responsible for the exercise of ordinary care and prudence. If he assumed to do any part of the work himself, he should exercise ordinary care and skill in doing it; if he did nothing personally, except hiring all the servants, he should exercise ordinary care in employing a sufficient number of competent servants. And a declaration, alleging that he carelessly and negligently permitted the track and a car to become and remain defective, would be sustained by evidence that they became and remained defective through his personal carelessness and negligence in not discovering and remedying the defects, if he took upon himself that branch of the business; or by evidence that he assumed the general management and superintendence of the road, and employed all the workmen, and that from gross negligence he employed no repair-men, or an insufficient number, or unskillful ones, whereby the track and a car became and remained defective. In either case, the defects would exist by reason of his own negligence. Whether his negligence consisted in not discovering or in not removing the defects himself, or in not employing any or a sufficient number of repair-men, or competent ones, the action could be founded upon his personal negligence, and the allegation that the defect existed by reason of his negligence would be sufficient.

The same general rules must be applicable, whether the owner of the road and employer of the workmen is a person or a corporation. The agents of a corporation must have a principal, and its servants-must have a master; and the mutual duties and liabilities between master and servant must be the same, whether the master is a man, or a being existing only in contemplation of law. In the present case, ordinary care and prudence may have required that workmen should have been employed to repair the cars, and to remove the snow and ice from the track, and the stockholders may have voted not to employ such workmen, or to employ a number known to be insufficient, or those known to be incompetent, and the plaintiff, in the exercise of reasonable care, and without any knowledge, or means of knowledge of defects in the ear or track, or of the insufficiency or incompetency of the repair-men, may have been injured in consequence of the action of the stockholders. In such case, although the stockholders, for many purposes, are not the corporation, it would not, probably, be denied that the plaintiff, being injured by the gross negligence of the controlling power of the corporation, could maintain this action. The declaration must, therefore, be held sufficient.

It is understood that the powers and duties of the directors are such, that, in the general management of the business of the corporation, their negligence may be called the negligence of the corporation, in contradistinction to the negligence of its servants. Whether any other officers occupy a similar position in relation to the corporation and its servants, can not now be decided. King v. B. & W. Railroad, 9 Cush. 42; C. C. & Cin. Railroad v. Keary, 3 Ohio (St.) 201.

The rule is very generally established that a servant who is injured by the negligence of a fellow-servant in the course of their common employment, without any fault on the part of the master, can maintain no action against the master for such injury.- The rule appears to be founded on the implied contract that he who engages in the employment of another for the performance of specified duties and services, for compensation, takes upon himself the natural and ordinary risks and perils incident to the performance of such services, the compensation, in legal presumption, being adjusted accordingly; and it is said that perils arising from the negligence of fellow-servants are incident to the service. Farwell v. B. & W. Railroad, 4 Met. 49.

The contract between master and servant, for many if not for all purposes, is, that each will exercise ordinary and reasonable care. If an individual is the sole owner of a railroad, and also general manager, purchaser and superintendent, he is presumed to engage with his workmen that he will use ordinary care in furnishing them with engines, cars and road, in a condition reasonably safe, and if, from any defect in the engines, cars or road, which ordinary care on the part of the owner personally would have prevented or cured, a brakeman, in the exercise of ordinary care, having no knowledge or means of knowledge of the defect, is injured, the owner is liable. But it would be unreasonable to imply a contract of warranty, on the part of the owner, that the engines, cars and road should be sufficient and free from defect. And it is claimed that it would be equally unreasonable to imply a contract of warranty on the part of the owner with each of the workmen that all the other workmen should be competent and free from fault, and that the only reasonable and consistent contract that can be implied on this point is that the owner will exercise ordinary care in employing competent workmen. If such owner hires an engine and engineer, and a brakeman is injured at one time by a defect in the engine, and at another time by the fault of the engineer’, it might be difficult to imply a contract on the part of the owner to use ordinary care in hiring a suitable engine, and a contract of warranty that he would hire a suitable engineer, and that the engineer should not only be reasonably competent, but that he should never be negligent.

It has been held substantially that whether a workman is injured through inadequacy of machinery, or other aids or means furnished by his master, or through incompetency or carelessness of fellow-workmen, his right of action against his employer stands upon the same ground ; that between master and servant the implied contract is that each will use ordinary care in all things pertaining to the servant’s business ; that if a master exercises ordinary care in hiring and retaining in his employment a competent engineer, and in buying and continuing to use a suitable engine, the master should no more be liable to a brakeman, if the engineer should prove to be incompetent, or being generally competent should on some occasion be careless, than if the engine, apparently sufficient, should explode; that the master has performed his contract with the brakeman, so far as it relates to the engine and engineer, when he has done all that ordinary care requires him to do to secure an engine and engineer reasonably suitable for the business. If the owner of a railroad, being a person of ordinary care, should select his servants with reasonable circumspection, and ride upon the road himself, he would take as much care of his brakemen as of himself, so far as their safety depended upon the other servants ; and the brakeman, who would charge the owner with greater obligations, should establish his claim upon strong and satisfactory grounds of reason, justice, public policy, or probability as to the actual intention and understanding of the parties in making the contract of service.

The law on this subject is not peculiar to common carriers, railroads, or extensive enterprises. The responsibilities of the defendants, in this case, and of the individual who hires two laborers in harvest, or two carpenters to erect a staging and shingle his house, are to be determined by the same legal tests. This case is between master and servant, and is to be carefully distinguished from a case between common carrier and passenger, as there may be no foundation in the former for the peculiar principles applicable in the latter. Bailees are held to different degrees of care in different kinds of bailment, as between themselves and the other parties to the contract of bailment; but all bailees, as between themselves and their servants, must be held to a degree of care fixed by a general and uniform rule. The business in which the master is engaged is immaterial.

If the employer’s contract with his workmen is, that he will use ordinary care in the employment of other workmen, but that he will not guarantee their carefulness, and if he use such care, and, by the negligence of one of them another of them is injured, the employer is not liable, the common rule of torts, that the act of the servant is the act of the master, being suspended as to that case by the contract. But if a third person, not a party to the contract between the master and servant, is injured by the fault of the servant, his right of action against the master does not depend upon, and is not limited by that contract. The servant has agreed to bear, and is paid for bearing the risks incident to the service; the stranger has not made such an agreement, and is not paid for bearing such risks.

And if the contract, implied on the part of the servant, is to bear the risks only of the business in which he is engaged, and not the risks of other business, he would not be prevented by his contract from maintaining an action against the master, if he were injured by the negligence of another servant of the same master, engaged in other business. His remedy would be restricted by the contract only as to the negligence of fellow-servants engaged in the same general service, or those employed in the conduct of one common enterprise or undertaking, or those whose employment is such that, by their negligence in the usual line of their duty, he might reasonably expect to be endangered, or those whose negligence might be understood to be incident to his service.

There being an express agreement between the master and servant to do certain work and to pay for that work, but no express agreement as to the care to be exercised, the liabilities to be assumed, or the risks to be borne by either, the most reasonable contract is to be implied on those subjects. The servant is supposed, to undertake that he will exercise reasonable and ordinary care in doing the work; and he is liable, if, from the want of such care on his part, any damage result to the person or property of the master, and the damage could not have been avoided by ordinary care on the part of the master. And if the servant receives an injury which such care on his part would have avoided, he has no remedy against the master, although the master may also have been in fault. And if the servant knows that a certain part of the work is to be done by other servants, and the master is required to use ordinary care in employing them, the obligations of master and servant, as between themselves, in every thing done by each of them in relation to the servant’s business, would be reciprocal and equal.

A contract is implied, on the part of the servant, that he assumes the apparent risks, as well as those generally incident and ordinarily and reasonably to be expected in the service. Assop v. Yates, 2 H. & N. 768. He engages to bear the special perils which he knows actually to exist in his particular service, as well as the dangers generally appertaining to such business. If an engineer undertakes to run an engine which he knows to be defective and peculiarly liable to burst, he has no remedy for an explosion to which he voluntarily exposes himself. If he would have the visible or known risks-borne by his employer, he should insist upon an express stipulation to that effect in the contract; no such stipulation can reasonably be inferred. And if the servant takes the risks of known defects of machinery, it would seem that he also assumes, to some extent, the risks of known incompetency and insufficiency of fellow-servants. Skipp v. E. C. R. Co., 9 W. H. & G. 223.

In the present state of this case we are not called upon to determine what rule, as to the liability of a master to a servant, for the negligence of a fellow-servant, is the law of this state, as the defendants maybe made liable without raising that question. And whether it should have beeu alleged in the declaration that it was the duty of the defendants to use and exercise ordinary and reasonable care and diligence, to keep the said road and car in reasonably good and sufficient repair, &c., and that the defendants did not use and exercise ordinary and reasonable care and diligence to keep, &c., but negligently and carelessly allowed and suffered, &c., is a question not argued by counsel or considered by the court. Similar allegations, in the leading case of Priestly v. Fowler, 3 M. & W. 1, were held insufficient upon grounds which are not satisfactory to us. It was there said that if the owner of a carriage is responsible to his servant for the sufficiency of the carriage, he is responsible to the servant, also, for the negligence of his coach-maker, or his harness-maker, or his coachman, and that the tnere relation of master and servant never can imply an obligation on the part of the master to take more care of the servant than he may reasonably be expected to do of himself. But the declaration in that case was, not that the defendant insured the plaintiff against injury from all defects in the carriage, but that it became the duty of the defendant, on that occasion, to use due and proper care that the said carriage should be in a proper state of repair. The declaration seems to have been considered as setting forth a right of action growing out of a contract of warranty; whereas; in fact, it alleged substantially that from the relation of master and servant, there was to be implied, on the part of the master, a contract to use due and proper care. If the implied contract were that the master should use ordinary care in procuring a suitable carriage and suitable fellow-servants for the plaintiff, the inconvenient and absurd consequences which the decision in that case seems to have been intended to avoid, would not have resulted from holding the declaration sufficient. The terms “ ordinary and reasonable care and diligence,” have an exactly defined meaning in law, and perhaps they should be used in declai’ations of this kind.

Demurrer overruled.