Dudley v. Atlantic Coast Line Ry. Co.
Dudley v. Atlantic Coast Line Ry. Co.
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
*76 This is an action for damages, alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff through the negligence and wilfulness of the defendant. The complaint thus alleges the manner in which the plaintiff was injured:
“That on the 7th day of August, 1915, plaintiff was asked by the depot agent of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company, at Tatum, S. C., to get him, the said agent, a bucket of hot water from the engine .attached to the train running from Bennettsville, S. C., to Fayetteville, N. C. When it stopped at the depot at Tatum, S. C., the plaintiff took a water bucket and went to the engine attached to the said train to get the said bucket of hot water. When he asked for the water, the fireman on the engine of the said train at once turned on a small stream of hot water from the boiler on said engine. After the water had run for a moment, the fireman opened wide the cock or faucet, and the hot scalding water was thrown upon the person of the said plaintiff, causing him great hurt and pain.”
The jury rendered a verdict in favor of the defendant, and the plaintiff appealed.
This is assigned as error.
The ruling of the Circuit Judge is sustained by the case of Davenport v. Railway, 72 S. C. 205, 51 S. E. 677, 110 Am. St. Rep. 598.
The act of the servant must be done in furtherance of the master’s business, and for the accomplishment of the object for which the servant is employed; or while operating the instrumentality in the conduct of the business within the *77 scope of the employment; or the act must be done in the interest of the master, and for his benefit.
A servant in charge of a dangerous agency who acts without any reference to the object for which he is employed, and not for the purpose of performing the work of the employer, but to effect some independent purpose of his own, does not render the master responsible for the wrongful acts of the servant.
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
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- Syllabus
- 1. Railroads—Tort of Servant—Wanton Injury.—If railroad locomotive fireman, in the performance of his duty, injured plaintiff, who, at the request of a station agent of the railroad, was getting a bucket of hot water from the engine, the railroad was liable to plaintiff, but if the fireman injured him wilfully and wantonly, when acting outside the scope of his authority in doing something he was not employed to do, the railroad was not liable. 2. Trial—-Instructions—Inapplicability.—In an action against a railroad for injuries to plaintiff when scalded by hot water turned on by a locomotive fireman, the injury having arisen from the manner in which the instrumentality was operated by the fireman, not having been caused by the fact that it was dangerous, instructions as to the duty of a master who places his servant in charge of a dangerous appliance were properly refused, as inapplicable. 3. Railroads — Management of Locomotive — Duty to Public. — The duty which a railroad owed to the public, to see that its locomotive, a dangerous appliance, was so operated and managed as to do no harm, was not absolute, but only to exercise ordinary care. 4. Negligence—Dangerous Appliance on Premises—Injury to Trespassers or Licensees.—The owner of a dangerous appliance on his premises is not an insurer against injury to trespassers or licensees, but the law imposes on him the duty to anticipate such injuries as proximately result from his failure to safeguard the public from injury, in discharging which duty he is required to exercise ordinary care.