Yentsch v. Chloride of Silver Dry Cell Battery Co.

Fowler, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The plaintiff sues to recover damages for serious personal injury which he alleges was caused by defective or improperly constructed machinery used in the factory of the defendant company. At the close of the plaintiff’s testimony the Judge of the Superior Court of Baltimore City, at the instance of the defendant, took the case from the jury. There was accordingly a verdict and judgment in favor of the defendant, and the plain ⁶⁸⁰ tiff has appealed.

It will, therefore, be necessary to examine the testimony, as contained in the record in order to determine, assuming it all to be true, whether there is any error in the action of the Court in taking the case from the jury. ' It appears from the testimony that in the room of the factory of the defendant in which the p.aintiff was working there is among other machinery and appliances “a sand paper wheel” used for grinding down and shaping pieces of hard compressed paper which are used in fitting out electrical batteries. This machine is composed of two large flat iron wheels on an axle three or four feet long, all supported about four feet up from the floor on two braces constructed much like the common saw-horse. The wheels are about thirty six inches in diameter. The outer flat service of each wheel is covered by a large sheet of sand paper, held by an iron band or rim screwed on the outer edge, and which is removed to put in fresh sheets of paper from time to time.

The wheels are kept revolving at the rate of from 280 to 300 revolutions per nlinute or faster» by power transmitted through a belt which runs around a pulley or flat wheel on the axle, midway between the sand paper wheels. This machinery is kept running continuously all day. The fibre to be ground or shaped is pressed up against one of these revolving sand paper wheels until the desired amount of grinding has been accomplished.” It also appears from the testimony that the space between the wheel and the table or rest which supported the fibre while it was in the hands of the plaintiff was from a quarter to three eighths of an inch wide and that it ought not to have been more than one sixteenth of an inch in width ; that the sand paper on the rim of the wheel was not wide enough and that air would get under the paper and form lumps which caught the fibre plate that was being ground and forced it between the table on which it rested and the wheel; that the frame or structure on which the wheel rested was not fixed tight and that it was without a loose pulley. The plaintiff thus describes the accident. “He was grinding fibre plates about six inches square and ^5 of an inch ⁶⁸¹ thick * * * The wheel was going around.

There was a dangerous edge on the wheel because the paper was too small and came out of the hub on the outside that held the paper on * * his hand slipped against the wheel and was pulled through. He could not get it out.” He called for assistance but because there was no loose pulley on the machine it could not be stopped at once. The plaintiff was about 17 years old at the time of the accident. His duties were to work all around the shop at everything.

He testifies that he had been grinding fibre-plates for five or six weeks for a short time each day, but that he was not experienced and never had any instructions ; that he was never told of the danger-; that he did not know that lumps would form on the sandpaper around the wheel. He further testified that his injury was caused by the lump on the sandpaper striking the fibre-plate, carrying it and his hand into the space between the wheel and the table. The witness, Clarence W. Smith, a tinner and plumber, testified that “he had worked at this machine about four months ; it was a dangerous machine * * *. The space between the wheel and the plate on which the fibre rested when being ground was about one-quarter of an inch or three-eighths, something like that.

If the plate had been nearer to the wheel the fibre would not have gone down and the plaintiff’s hand would not have,