Murray v. . Dwight

55 N.E. 901, 161 N.Y. 301, 15 E.H. Smith 301, 1900 N.Y. LEXIS 1440

• Court: New York Court of Appeals
• Decided: January 9, 1900
• Status: Published

Opinions

O’Brien, J.

The plaintiff, a young man about twenty years of age, received a personal injury from the falling of a pulley block at the defendant’s warehouse on the 24th day of March, 1894. The evidence tended to show that the block fell by reason of the negligence of the defendant’s general employees, or some of them, and the question presented at the trial was whether the plaintiff was a co-servant with them within the rule that relieves employers from liability in cases of accidents of this character. The trial court held that the plaintiff was a co-servant of the person whose negligence caused the injury, and the complaint was dismissed. On appeal to the Appellate Division this judgment was reversed and a new trial granted, and in this condition the case comes here.

The opinion of the learned court below contains a clear and concise statement of the facts concerning the accident, the substance of which we may safely adopt. The defendant was the owner of a warehouse in which there was a hoisting-apparatus for the purpose of hoisting and lowering heavy articles from one story to another. There is a projection at the roof in which there is an iron wheel over which a chain passes down in front of the building and about a foot and a half therefrom. This chain at the roof passes into the building and around a drum and thence to the back part of the building. An endless rope is attached to the drum, by'means of which a man in the building may operate it and hoist or lower the chain outside. If it is desired to use horse power in hoisting, a pulley block is attached to the door post in the lower story and another pulley block with tackle is hooked on the chain and drawn up to the top of the building. A rope connected with the upper block passes down and over the lower pulley and thence into the building, and to this a horse ' is attached. In operating the tackle the horse moves forward and backward within the building.

The plaintiff was the servant of a truckman and was sent by his master with a horse to hoist at the defendant’s warehouse. The goods to be moved from the first to a higher floor in the warehouse were barrels of lime. The plaintiff, on arriving at the warehouse with his horse, stopped near the curbstone in front of the door while other men in the employ of the defendant were putting in place the pulley blocks and tackle. The upper pulley block was hooked on to the chain and was being drawn up to its place by one of the men operating the drum inside. When the block was nearly up the plaintiff was told to go in, and as he started to do so, the block fell upon the plaintiff. He had not worked there before and, as the testimony tended to show, knew nothing about the apparatus for hoisting. He had nothing to do with placing it in position. The horse belonged to the truckman, the plaintiff’s master, and the plaintiff was paid by him. The work of moving the barrels of lime from the lower to a higher story was under the direction of the defendant’s foreman.

The question when and under what circumstances the servant of a general master becomes the servant of another is often difficult of solution. There is some apparent conflict in the authorities, due more to the difficulty of "applying the legal principle to ever-varying facts than to any discord with respect to the principle itself. Moreover, the rule is subject to some distinctions that are not always easy to state in such a way as to render the result in every case so plain as to command acquiescence, or to give to the decision the character of a conclusive authority. Counsel upon both sides have, in the argument of this case before us, subjected the leading authorities to a very careful and able examination that has thrown so much light upon the question that we have been greatly aided in arriving at what appears to us to be the proper conclusion. We think the judgment of reversal in the court below is correct. The opinion of Judge Merwin contains such a clear statement of the law as deduced from the numerous cases, and such a judicious application of it to the facts, that we would not attempt to add anything to his reasoning but for the fact that the learned counsel for the defendant has attempted to prove by an argument, which bears all the marks of industry and discrimination, that it is in conflict with two or three recent cases in this court. Before referring to these cases, it .may not be amiss to point out a feature of the controversy peculiar to this case and which distinguishes it from many, if not all of those cited.

The relation of master and servant is often confused with some other relation. The mere fact that one person renders some service to another for compensation, expressed or implied, does not necessarily create the legal relation of master and servant. There are many kinds of employment which are peculiar and special, where one person may render service to another without becoming his servant in the legal sense. A servant is one who is employed to render personal services to his employer otherwise than in the pursuit of an independent calling. The truckman who transports the traveler’s baggage or the merchant’s goods to the railroad station, though hired and paid for the service by the owner of the baggage or the goods, is not the servant of the person who thus employs him. He is exercising an independent and quasi public employment in the nature of a common carrier, and Ids customers, whether few or many, are not generally responsible for his negligent or wrongful acts, as they may be for those of other persons in their regular employment ás servants. A contract, whether express or implied, under which such special jobs are done or such special services rendered, is not that of master and servant within the law of negligence. (Jackson A. Iron Works v. Hurlbut, 158 N. Y. 34; 1 Parsons on Contracts, 101-109.)

The plaintiff beyond all doubt was in the general service of the truckman and so was his general servant. In that capacity he represented his master and, hence, was a truckman himself. In the pursuit of that calling he was directed by his master to render special services to the defendant, not in moving goods from the store or warehouse to a place of shipment, but from the lower floor of the warehouse to an upper floor. It so happened that in this particular job it was not necessary to use the truck, but it was necessary to use the horse in order to furnish power to hoist the goods. Neither the time, nor duration of employment, nor the rate of compensation, was the subject of any express contract with the defendant, and from the nature of the case there could not well have been any well-defined agreement on the subject. The employment in its scope and character was in no respect essentially different from that which every truckman enters into with his- numerous customers in the course of a day as a carrier of baggage or goods. The fact that the plaintiff detached the truck and performed the job with a horse alone did not change the character of the employment, nor the legal relation that exists between an ordinary truckman and his customers. The goods were moved, it is true, not by the' truck, but by another contrivance, and the plaintiff’s duty was to manage and guide the horse, which was the real power behind the pulleys and tackle, as it would have been when hitched to the truck. In this capacity the plaintiff represented his general master, the truckman, and was all the time his servant, and did not become in any legal sense the servant of-the defendant any more than he would if employed to move the goods to a railroad station on the truck, and if not such servant he could not, of course, have become the co-servant of the defendant’s regular workmen.

The recent cases in this court cited by the learned counsel for the defendant, and to which we will now briefly refer, differ widely from this in the nature of the employment and in the legal relations held by the person guilty of the wrong or negligent act and the party sought to be charged with its consequences.

In Wyllie v. Palmer (137 N. Y. 248) the defendants sold fireworks to an organized committee in a city for the purpose of a celebration. They agreed to, and did, send to the committee at its own expense a competent man, who was their general servant, to set off these fireworks under the direction of the committee, and this man brought with him a boy, also in the general service of the defendants, as a helper. In the course of the display the committee virtually separated the boy from the control of the man and set him at firing rockets, a work which he was not competent to do and which neither his general master nor the man intended that he should do. One of these rockets was discharged into a crowd through his negligence, and the plaintiff, a bystander, was injured. This court held that if his negligent act was to be imputed to any third party it should be imputed to the committee giving the order to the boy to do something for which he was incompetent, rather than to his general master who was not present and who had sent him there for a different purpose.

In Higgins v. W. U. T. Co. (156 N. Y. 75) the plaintiff was injured by the negligent act of a person operating an elevator and who was the general servant of the defendant. The plaintiff was the servant of the contractor for the repair of the building, including the furnishing of the elevator itself. The contractor had placed the elevators in the building some time before the accident and they were in use at times by the defendant to carry passengers and by the contractor for purposes of his own. But he had not completed the contract and had not turned over the building, with the elevators, to the defendant. They were still, for all practical purposes, under the control of the contractor, who had a right to use them for the purpose of carrying materials and workmen from the lower to the higher floors. The plaintiff’s master wanted to use the elevator on the day of the accident as a platform upon which to stand while plastering the shaft in which it had been placed, and procured the defendant’s general servant to operate it by moving it up and down through the shaft for the convenience of the plaintiff engaged in the work of plastering. The injury to tne plaintiff occurred while the elevator was being used for this purpose, and, as the proof tended to show, by the negligent act of the operator. This court held that the operator, at the time of the accident, was not engaged in his general master’s work, but was acting under the orders of the plaintiff and in a different capacity. It is apparent, ! think, that the plaintiff in that case occupied a different relation to the person moving the elevator than he would had the injury occurred while being conveyed as a passenger in the elevator to his place of duty on an upper floor and while the elevator was being used as a passenger elevator, and while it was in law the defendant’s elevator and in charge and control of its servants.

. In McInerney v. D. & H. C. Co. (151 N. Y. 411) the question that we are now concerned with was not involved, as will be seen by the opinion, which expressly disclaims any intention to deal with, the question whether the plaintiff in that case was injured by the act of a fellow-servant. So we think that the case at bar is not governed by these decisions, since there is a material difference in the facts, as we have attempted to point out.

The judgment of the court below should, therefore, be affirmed, and judgment absolute ordered for the plaintiff, with costs.