Negligence, Employer's liability. In an action by a longshoreman against a steamship company by which he was employed for personal injuries from a box, which was alleged to have been piled on other boxes negligently by servants of the defendant, falling on the plaintiff when he was wheeling a truck in unloading a vessel at the defendant's wharf, where the accident happened after the workmen's compensation act had taken effect and the defendant was not a subscriber under the provisions of that statute, but there was nothing to show what caused the box to fall on the plaintiff, it was held, that there was no evidence that the fall of the box was caused by the negligence of the defendant or of its servants and that a verdict properly was ordered for the defendant.
BRALEY, J.
The verdict for the defendant was ordered rightly, even if the defences of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and that the injury was caused by the negligence of a fellow employee were not available under St. 1911, c. 751, Part I, § 1, because the company was not a subscriber.
The plaintiff failed to introduce any affirmative evidence from which the jury would have been warranted in finding that the fall of the box resulted from either the defendant's negligence, or the negligence of its servants. Hofnauer v. R.H. White Co. 186 Mass. 47. Droney v. Doherty, 186 Mass. 205, 206. Curtin v. Boston Elevated Railway, 194 Mass. 260. Ryan v. Fall River Iron Works Co. 200 Mass. 188.
Exceptions overruled.