Negligence, Employer's liability. If a boy nineteen years of age employed in a box factory is set to work at cutting pieces of wood for boxes upon a machine, in the use of which he is inexperienced, containing a circular saw revolving toward him against which he is to push a movable table holding the piece of wood to be cut, while attached to an adjoining stationary table about two inches back of the revolving saw is a flat piece of metal a little thinner than the saw called a spreader, intended to enter the slit in the wood as the saw cuts it and prevent the wood from closing on the saw, and if the screws attaching the spreader to the stationary table are loose, causing the spreader to go one way or the other, and this defect has existed long enough to have been known to the superintendent of the factory, but the danger from it is not known to the boy or appreciated by him and he has not been instructed in regard to it, and the boy is pushing a piece of wood on the movable table against the saw when owing to the looseness of the screws the spreader fails to enter the slit in the piece of wood but strikes the wood a little to one side of the cut causing the piece of wood to be stopped with a violent jerk and the boy's hand to be thrown forward upon the saw and be is injured, in an action by the boy against his employer for the injuries thus caused, these facts are evidence to go to the jury of the exercise by the plaintiff at the time of the accident of such care as reasonably could be expected of him, and of a failure on the part of the defendant, or of those for whose acts it was responsible, to use due care to keep the machine in a safe condition, and also of a breach of duty toward the plaintiff in failing to instruct him as to the effect of a loose or defective spreader.
HAMMOND, J.
Upon the evidence the jury might have found that the plaintiff was inexperienced with reference to this machine and should have been instructed as to the effect of a loose or defective spreader; and that at the time of the accident he was in the exercise of such care as could reasonably have been expected of him; that the accident was due to the looseness of the screws by which the spreader was bound to the stationary table, and that this defect had existed so long that if reasonable care had been exercised by the defendant, or those for whose care it was responsible, this defect would have been remedied. In other words, the jury might have found that the plaintiff was careful and that the accident was due to the failure on the part of the defendant to use due care for the safe condition of the machines. The jury might further have found that the danger of the loose spreader was not known to or appreciated by the plaintiff. Upon such findings a case would have been made out by the plaintiff. We think that the plaintiff was entitled to have his case submitted to the jury.
Exceptions sustained.