Leinen v. Joslin

142 N.W. 988, 161 Iowa 745
CourtSupreme Court of Iowa
DecidedSeptember 20, 1913
StatusPublished

This text of 142 N.W. 988 (Leinen v. Joslin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Leinen v. Joslin, 142 N.W. 988, 161 Iowa 745 (iowa 1913).

Opinion

Preston, J.

Defendant owned and operated a threshing outfit, consisting of engine and separator. Defendant was an [746]*746experienced engineer and at the time of plaintiff’s injury was personally in charge of and operating the engine. Plaintiff was a farmer, twenty-seven years of age, at the time he was hurt on September 2, 1909. He had been in defendant’s employ in the summer of 1909 about a month as assistant separator man and did other work under defendant’s orders and directions. He had some experience around an engine for about three years during the threshing and shredding seasons but had never operated an engine. Briefly stated, plaintiff’s claim is as he states it in his evidence:

We moved the outfit on September 1st, but did not commence to thresh until the 2d. On the morning of the 2d we started out, fired up in the morning, put the belt on, run a little while. The help had not all arrived and there was no grain and so Joslin stopped the engine. The engine run probably five or ten minutes before shutting down. When he stopped the engine, it stopped on center. You have to take hold of the flywheel and start it off by hand when it stops on dead center. I knew that. When he went to start it was on center. Didn’t start. He called me to come. I was about a hundred feet from the engine. I went over and he said, ‘It is on center; turn her off.’ I took hold of the flywheel to pull her down. I pulled down a couple of times and it didn’t' come. I asked him if the steam was off; he said it was; and I said I couldn’t do it. Joslin stepped up to the flywheel. I was facing the wheel and took hold of the rim of the wheel on the outside with my left hand and on the inside of the rim with my right hand and pulled down with both hands. Joslin took hold and raised up on it. When it went, it went with full speed, caught my right hand, twisting the arm over, broke both bones of the wrist, and pulling off the tendons. Joslin was thrown over on the ground in front of the engine. When Joslin called me I didn’t know whether the steam power was on or not. After I was hurt, and after defendant was drawn over the wheel, he got up and shut off the engine. I didn’t think the steam was on when I took hold of the flywheel. Prior to this time defendant had called me to turn the flywheel when the belt was off but never when it was on or when the steam was on. No one told me how to take hold of the wheel. [747]*747I did it as I always had, and as defendant had seen me do it, and as I had seen others do it. Defendant never instructed me how to take hold of the wheel. It was only a short time between the first effort to pull it off center and the second time. After the first effort I stepped back and asked Joslin if the steam was shut off, and he said, ‘Yes.’ I did not know whether it was or not only what he told me. Sometimes it took more pulling than at other times.

There was evidence of other witnesses tending in the same direction. Defendant’s evidence differs from that of plaintiff in some respects. He denies telling plaintiff the steam was shut off but claims it was in fact shut off. He claims plaintiff was injured by the belt flying off and striking him. The flywheel was forty inches in diameter and weighed six hundred pounds; the outer rim, over which the belt runs, is twelve inches wide and the belt six and one-quarter inches.

There was a conflict in the evidence as to how the injury was inflicted and as to whether the steam was or was not shut off, as there was as to the safe way of taking hold of the wheel to turn it. Some of the witnesses claimed that there was another way safer than the way adopted by plaintiff. But there is evidence from which the jury were justified in finding that it would be safe to do as plaintiff did, if the steam had been shut off. There is a conflict in the evidence as to whether enough steam would remain in the steam chest, after the steam was shut off, to turn the wheel fast enough and long enough, after the engine was pulled off center, to injure plaintiff. The court instructed the jury that, if plaintiff’s injuries were caused in that manner, he could not recover. The above statement of facts disposed of one of the points argued by appellant; that is, that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence because he did not adopt the safer of two ways of taking hold of the wheel to turn it. It was clearly a question for the jury. The ground of negligence relied upon and submitted to the jury was, as stated in one of the instructions, whether the steam was turned on at the time [748]*748when the plaintiff attempted to turn the flywheel to get the engine off center, and whether the steam was cut off at the time that it is claimed the defendant told the plaintiff that the steam was cut off, and just before the plaintiff attempted to take hold of the flywheel, the second time, to throw the engine off center. The jury was instructed that if the steam was cut off when plaintiff took hold of the wheel and had not been on after the engine stopped on center, and before plaintiff’s injury, then defendant would not be liable even though other causes may have made the flywheel start suddenly and rapidly when it was turned off center. There was evidence tending to show that plaintiff’s injuries were permanent. The defenses pleaded were a general denial, contributory negligence, and assumption of risk.

1. master and servant: assumption of riskL evidence I. The first point argued is the claim that it was established by plaintiff’s own evidence that he assumed the risk. It is argued that among the duties which he was to perform was the turning of the engine off center, and that when it stopped on center it had to be pulled off by him. The evidence is not quite as counsel state it. Plaintiff testified on this point: “When it would stop on center I would go forward, or somebody else, and turn it off. It was part of my duty to do whatever was to be done there, and it was one of the things that had to be done, to turn the flywheel off center, when it had stopped on center. ’ ’ The mere fact that it was his duty, when called upon to help pull the flywheel off center, is not enough to charge him with assumption of risk. The matter was properly submitted to the jury under instructions about which there is no complaint; they are favorable to the defendant on this point. If the transaction occurred as claimed by plaintiff, and the jury so found, they were justified in finding that tuiming the wheel when the steam was on was not one of the ordinary risks assumed but rather a risk arising out of the negligence of his employer, and that he did not know the steam was on or appreciate the danger. Plaintiff says he did [749]*749not know the steam was on, and that he had never turned the wheel when the steam was on. He does say, it is true, that he knew the position of the levers when the steam was on or off, and that the tops of the levers could be seen on the other side of the engine, but that he did not look at, or pay any attention to, them but relied on defendant’s statement that the steam had been turned off. He was not required to make an independent investigation. The defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff in regard to the machinery. Defendant was in a position to know whether the steam was on or off, and was in charge of and running the engine. Whether plaintiff in fact knew, or because it was so obvious that he must have known, that the steam was on was a question for the jury. See, on this proposition, Scott v. Railway, (Iowa) 141 N. W. 1065.

2. Nuw TRIAL : misconduct of juror: waiyer. II.

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Related

Scott v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co.
141 N.W. 1065 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1913)

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Bluebook (online)
142 N.W. 988, 161 Iowa 745, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/leinen-v-joslin-iowa-1913.