McDonald v. Champion Iron & Steel Co.

103 N.W. 829, 140 Mich. 401, 1905 Mich. LEXIS 580
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedJune 8, 1905
DocketDocket No. 21
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 103 N.W. 829 (McDonald v. Champion Iron & Steel Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Michigan Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McDonald v. Champion Iron & Steel Co., 103 N.W. 829, 140 Mich. 401, 1905 Mich. LEXIS 580 (Mich. 1905).

Opinion

Blair, J.

Patrick McDonald, son of the plaintiff, William McDonald, was killed at defendant’s Iron & Steel Works in- the city of Muskegon between 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon of April 2, 1902, and plaintiff, as administrator, brought this action against the defendant in the Muskegon circuit court to recover damages for such death, being the financial loss suffered by the father and mother by reason of being deprived of the boy’s earnings during his minority, namely, from his fourteenth to his twenty-first year.

Theodore D. Morgan was at the time of the injury the general manager of defendant’s plant, and John C. Williams was superintendent of the inside work under Mr. Morgan. There were a number of departments in defendant’s plant. The place where Patrick was killed was in the shearing department, where the sheets were squared up and trimmed for tinning. This particular shearing room was in charge of a foreman named John Points, who worked under Williams’ general direction, and had under his immediate direction from 30 to 50 men, including shearmen, scrap boys, and openers. There were some five sets of shears in the department, three sets of which were small shears, and were in a large outer room, and two sets of which, called the “big shears,” were in a small room by themselves, which opened out, however, into the large room. These large shearing machines extended lengthwise east and west up to a wall at the west end of the west machine. The fronts of the machines were towards the north, where [404]*404the shearmen stood and operated the machines by means of treadles. The backs of the machines were towards the south, and here the scrap boys stood and collected the scrap as it fell from the machines in the process of trimming the plates. Some six or seven feet to the south of the backs of the machines was a corrugated iron partition. The frames of the machines were some 10 or 12 feet in length, and the scrap boys at these machines therefore were required to perform their duties in a space bounded by the machines, the west wall, and the south partition, of from 20 to 24 feet in length and 6 or ? feet in width, with an open space at the east end only, leading out into the outer room. The gearing of the big shears was upon a rapidly revolving shaft, to which power was transmitted from line shafting above, and upon the shaft was a cogwheel meshing at the top into a cogwheel on another shaft further in from the perpendicular face of the machine. These shaftings work in such direction that the teeth of the cogwheels meet at the top and separate below. The shaft is about five feet above the floor. One Harry French was the scrap boy employed at the outer, or east, machine, and Patrick McDonald, the decedent, was employed at the west, or inner, machine. The shearman’s duty wasto take a package of sheets of iron, and, placing them upon the bed of the shearing .machine, trim the edges. The scrap boy’s duty was to stand at the back of the machine where the scrap would fall from this work, collect it with tongs as it fell, tie it into bundles, called “fagots,” and throw or pile it behind him. A man by the name of John O’Donnell was employed by defendant to remove these fagots upon a truck to a car outside of the building, whence it was hauled away.

Patrick McDonald went to work as a scrap hoy some time in February, 1902, and had worked continuously in such employment until the day of his death. He became 14 years of age on the 11th day of March, 1902, and up to the day of his death he always worked upon the smaller shearing machines, which had no walls or partitions back [405]*405of them, and where the scrap, as collected by the boys, was piled upon trucks, and not upon the floor. About 12 o’clock on the day in question, Patrick, with his shearman, began work on the inner, or west, shearing machine, and French, with his shearman, began work at the same time upon the east, or outer, machine. According to the general manager, Morgan, each one of these machines would “ probably accumulate a fagot every five minutes or so, when they were working full; something like that.” In the performance of their work the boys took the scrap, which would be in various lengths, according to the length of the plate, “ some eight, and some six, and some seven, all lengths, some wider and some narrower,” and doubled them up in bundles or fagots about 2k feet long, and weighing from 50 to 100 pounds, tied them with wire, and piled them in rows against the corrugated iron partition the full length of the machines and across from the wall to the shear frame just under the gearing. The boys proceeded with their work for something over two hours or thereabouts, when McDonald’s shearman, having finished his work, left the machine to work elsewhere .in the department. The method of the work in the department required that each scrap boy should follow his particular shearman about the department. Patrick, having finished his work soon after the shearman left the machine, started to go out from behind the machines, going toward the east, the only way in which he could get out. When Patrick started to go out to follow his shearman, there were three rows of these fagots piled lengthwise against the partition, the fagots being some 2k feet in length and 10 inches in diameter, so that they took up about half the space between the backs of the machines and the partition. At the point opposite the cogwheel and gearing the fagots extended from the partition clear up to the machine under the cogs and gearing, and the pile was at this point about three feet wide and 2k to 3 feet high. It was necessary for Patrick to climb over this pile of fagots in order to get out. French saw him start to come out, then turned to pull [406]*406some scrap away from his machine, heard a noise, looked up, and saw Patrick falling to the floor.

“His arm was tore off. You could see on his shirt afterwards. You could see where the cogs had run up his shirt. There was nothing there besides those cogs that could have caught him. The scrap itself was piled in the space under the gearing.”

This was the first time that Patrick McDonald had ever worked upon these big shears, and no instructions were given him at any time, so far as the record discloses. The foreman, Points, instructed French the first day he went to work in the mill how to bundle up the scrap and where to throw it, and told him to pile the fagots against the partition, and this seems to have been the company’s method in the operation of these machines, so far as the scrap boys were concerned, as shown by the testimony of Mr. Morgan, the general manager.

The plaintiff claims that the defendant failed in its legal duty to provide and maintain a safe place for the deceased boy to work in, in this: That the space provided was so confined that the usual and required method of doing the work might reasonably be expected to result in the piling of scrap across the passageway near the cogwheels, and thereby expose the scrap boy at the west machine to serious peril in endeavoring to leave the machine, and defendant did not make adequate provisions for the removal of the scrap, but permitted its accumulation. The circuit judge submitted the case to the jury upon this theory. Defendant’s counsel contend that this was error for the reasons:

“ (a) Because, even with the fagots across the passageway, Patrick assumed the risk of passing over them.

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Bluebook (online)
103 N.W. 829, 140 Mich. 401, 1905 Mich. LEXIS 580, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcdonald-v-champion-iron-steel-co-mich-1905.