O'Neill v. Venango Manufacturing Co.
O'Neill v. Venango Manufacturing Co.
Opinion of the Court
The negligence with which the plaintiff charged the defendant, and of which it was found guilty by a jury, was its failure to comply with the requirement of Section 12 of the Act of May 2,1905, P. L. 352, that elevator wells shall be properly and substantially enclosed or guarded. Whether there had been a compliance by the defendant with the terms of the statute, and, if not, whether its failure to comply was the proximate cause of the injuries sustained by the plaintiff, were questions for the jury. They were submitted in a charge in which no error appears, and a specific instruction of the learned trial judge was that, if the jury should find that O’Neill had done anything he ought not to have done, or omitted to do anything he should have done that contributed to his injury, the verdict should be for the defendant. The case could not have been taken from the jury, and nothing in the thirteen assignments of error calls for its retrial.
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- O'Neill v. The Venango Manufacturing Company
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- Negligence — Master and servant — Factories—Elevators—Act of May 8, 1905, P. L. 858 — Gase for jury. Where in an action against a manufacturing company to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by an employee in a factory, there was evidence that while plaintiff was waiting at an unguarded elevator shaft for an elevator to descend, a heavy truck which had been moved to the shaft by a workman on the floor above, fell through the shaft, struck the floor of the descending elevator, and bounded upon plaintiff severely injuring him, and there was testimony to the effect that the accident could have been avoided if the shaft had been guarded by a cage, it was for the jury to determine whether defendant had complied with Section 12 of the Act of May 2, 1905, P. L. 352, requiring that elevator wells shall be properly and substantially enclosed or guarded, and a verdict and judgment for plaintiff were sustained.