Hettchen v. Chipman

This suit was brought by the appellant against the appellee to recover damages for a personal injury. At the time the occurrence happened the appellant was a lad of fourteen years of age. Some four months prior to the acci ⁷³⁰ dent he had been employed by the appellee’s foreman to gather up and pile in bins the spindles and chair legs made in the appellee’s factory. Upon three or four occasions he sawed wood on one of the circular saws located in the basement of the factory, using the saw from three to four hours each time.

It sometimes became necessary to place transverse sticks across the openings of the bins to prevent the spindles and chair legs when put there from rolling out. The foreman instructed the appellant to go into the yard and get such sticks whenever requisite, and directed him, if he found them too long, to carry them to the saw and cut them the proper length. On the day the injury was inflicted the appellant undertook to saw one of these sticks— in fact it was a plank some three or four inches wide andan inch thick—and one of the fingers of his right hand came in contact with the saw, was badly cut and subsequently amputated. The saw which caused the injury was not the one that the appellant had previously used ; but was a somewhat larger one with longer teeth, and was located on the floor above the basement.

The only witness who testified on the trial in the Court below was the plaintiff himself. Upon the conclusion of his testimony an instruction was granted, at the instance of the defendant, withdrawing the case from the consideration of the jury, because there was no legally sufficient evidence of negligence to warrant the jury in finding a verdict for the plaintiff A judgment was accordingly entered for the defendant and the plaintiff then took this appeal. The Court said: “The cause of action is alleged negligence. Actionable negligence, as we have repeatedly said, is the breach of a duty that is owed to another.

If in a particular instance no duty is owed ; or, if a duty being owed has been performed then no action can be sustained even though an injury has happened. Therefore, the very first inquiry is, what duty did the employer owe to the employee? The duty of an employer is dependent on the circumstances. It is consequently relative and conditional, and not unvarying and absolute.

Amongst the many condí ⁷³¹ tions that control it are the age of the employee and the obvious and visible character of the perils of the employment. The age of the employee is an element to be considered in determining whether there has been actionable negligence, solely because it may furnish the basis of an inference that he lacked the capacity or judgment to comprehend the dangers of the situation in which he was placed by the direction of the master. If such an inference be a legitimate one from the evidence, then negligence would be imputed to the master, because the duty of the latter is imperative not to expose a servant of immature years to a danger which he is, by reason of his-youth, incapable of appreciating. But it is obvious that the inference can never be properly deduced, and, therefore, cannot be drawn by a jury, in the teeth of uncontroverted evidence showing that the employee, though of