Johnson Chair Co. v. Agresto

73 Ill. App. 384, 1897 Ill. App. LEXIS 335
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedFebruary 14, 1898
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 73 Ill. App. 384 (Johnson Chair Co. v. Agresto) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Johnson Chair Co. v. Agresto, 73 Ill. App. 384, 1897 Ill. App. LEXIS 335 (Ill. Ct. App. 1898).

Opinion

Mr. Presiding Justice Adams

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of appellee and against appellant in a suit brought by the former for negligently causing the death of his intestate, Frank Agresto, a boy between six and seven years of age. The suit was brought under the statute for the benefit of the next of kin of the deceased.

The facts are substantially as follows: Appellant’s factory is situated between Halsted and Green and Phillips and Pratt streets, in the city of Chicago. Halsted and Green streets are north and south streets, Halsted being the street next east of Green. Phillips and Pratt streets are east and west streets. Appellant’s premises extend from Halsted street to Green street, and, July 28, 1891, appellant was erecting a new building on the Halsted street side of the premises. There was, at that date, a pile of lumber on the Green street sidewalk, opposite appellant’s premises, consisting of boards and planks four or five feet in height and less than twenty feet in length. Appellant had a contract with the Ott Lumber Company for lumber for the building which appellant was erecting, the lumber to' be delivered to appellant by the lumber company. On the twenty-eighth day of July, 1891, the Ott Lumber Company sent one Charles Gersch with a wagon load of lumber to appellant’s premises, to be there delivered. The load consisted of thirty-six pieces of timber, dimensions, twelve inches by twelve inches and fourteen feet long. Gersch approached the building with the load from the south on Green street, stopped and hitched the team about opposite the middle of appellant’s building, and went into the building and saw appellant’s foreman, who told him to go to the new building on Halsted street and see the carpenter boss there, which he did, leaving his team on Green street. He saw the carpenter boss, who came out and told him to turn his team around and come up right alongside of the pile of lumber on the sidewalk, and to put the lumber partly on the sidewalk and partly on the roadway—about two or three feet in the roadway. A house was being moved on Green street about that time, and the house movers were hurrying Gersch to get out of their way. There were five or six boys there, apparently watching the housemoving, and a witness for appellee testified that he saw the driver, Gersch, take a stake out, and heard him halloo at the boys to go away, but he says that he could not tell whether the deceased was one of these boys.

Eocco Gaffer, a witness in behalf of appellee, testified: “I live at 44 Phillips street, working at the barber trade. In ’91 I lived in the same block with the Agresto family. It was on the 28th of July, 1891. I don’t remember the time of day. He come over to my house and said, ‘Let’s go over to the house and play around there.’ They were moving a house in front of the Johnson chair factory on Green street. We sat on the logs there. They were piled about as high as my head; about that high (indicating six feet). We went to see how the house was moving, and sat on a pile of lumber. There was another little boy there. I was in the middle and Frank on the side of me, and a man come up with a load of lumber and said to. us, ‘To go off from there.’ As soon as we got off he turned the log down and the boy got killed under it, got under it. I think only one timber fell on him. I had my arms spread, and it just hit my little finger. I was trying to pull him out and another man came, and I run over to the house and told the old lady the boy was killed. We jumped down between the lumber pile and the wagon.”

Martin Eietz, a witness for appellee, testified: “The lumber that fell on the boy fell off the wagon. * *' * He wanted to get off one and three went off at the same time.” The question, the determination of which must be decisive of the case, is, was Gersch, the driver, in unloading the lumber, the servant of appellant or of the. Ott Lumber Company? It was the duty of the Ott Lumber Company, under its contract with appellant, to deliver the lumber to appellant, and Gersch, the driver of the wagon, was the servant of the lumber company for that purpose. This is not contradicted, and in view of the evidence, can not be successfully disputed. But appellee’s counsel contend, from the mere fact that a person in appellant’s employ, and who had authority so to do, directed the driver to unload the lumber at a particular place, that the driver, in unloading the lumber at that place, was acting as the servant of appellant. This proposition is, in our opinion, utterly untenable. So long as the lumber remained on the wagon of the Ott Lumber Company, it was in its possession and control. It could only be delivered to appellant by unloading it on appellant’s premises, or at some place by appellant’s direction. The act of unloading was the act of delivery, and was, therefore, an act which the Ott Lumber Company had contracted to perform and was bound to perform, and was the act of that company by its servant, the driver of the wagon. No direction whatever was given by appellant’s employee, the boss carpenter, to the driver, as to the manner of unloading; on the contrary, the evidence is that he merely indicated the place where the lumber was to be unloaded, and told the driver to help himself. Suppose A. to purchase from a coal dealer a load of coal to be delivered by "the dealer at A.’s residence, and that A., when the coal arrives in the dealer’s wagon, driven by the dealer’s driver, upon being requested by the driver to indicate where the coal shall be dumped, tells him to dump it on the street next to the sidewalk, in front of his premises, in a convenient place for its removal to A.’s cellar or coal bin, and that the driver, in dumping it at the place indicated, negligently causes injury to a third person, can it be contended that the driver, in dumping the coal, is A. ’s servant, and that A. is responsible for his negligence1? This is a matter of every day occurrence, and is, in principle, appellee’s 'case. We apprehend that no one, under such circumstances, would contend that A. was liable. The fact is, that when lumber, coal or other bulky material is contracted to be delivered to a purchaser, it is almost a matter of necessity to inquire of the purchaser in what place it will suit his convenience to have it delivered. In our opinion, the fact that Grersch, the driver, was acting as the servant of the Ott Lumber Company in unloading the lumber, is too plain to require the citation of authorities. Nevertheless, as counsel for appellee have argued the question at great length, we refer to the following authorities:

In McCullough v. Shoneman, 105 Pa. St. 169, the facts were that Shoneman sold to one Hemingway a lot of waste paper and rags, which were in an upper story of Shoneman’s building. Hemingway, by the contract, was to pack and take them away. He packed them in bags, which weighed, when packed, one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and sent two men to take them away, to whom the bags were delivered. Shoneman directed the men not to take them down by way of the stairs. There was no other way of taking them down, except to throw them out of the window. The men threw them out of the window, and one of them struck and injured the plaintiff.

Per Curiam.

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Bluebook (online)
73 Ill. App. 384, 1897 Ill. App. LEXIS 335, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/johnson-chair-co-v-agresto-illappct-1898.