Lynch v. M. T. Stevens & Sons Co.

This was an action to recover for the loss of a hand caused by a wool picker starting automatically from a dead stop while the plaintiff was cleaning the machine as he had been told to do. The machine was operated by a belt which came up through the floor and passed over a tight or a loose pulley on the machine as it was moved from one pulley to the other by a shipper handle. This belt and these pulleys were entirely covered by wooden casings and could not be seen by the operator of the machine. At the time of the accident the plaintiff was sixteen years of age and had been at work in the…