Chambers v. Crawford
Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Alleghany County
CHAMBERS and Boyd employed Crawford and Barker, boat-builders, to build for them a Kentucky boat, for conveying them and their families down the Ohio. The boat was built, delivered, and loaded; but had not proceeded many miles, till she took in water, and continuing to do so, funk about a mile below the mouth of Turtle-creek, in the Monongahela. The goods aboard, worth upwards of 100l. were lost.
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CHAMBERS and Boyd employed Crawford and Barker, boat-builders, to build for them a Kentucky boat, for conveying them and their families down the Ohio. The boat was built, delivered, and loaded; but had not proceeded many miles, till she took in water, and continuing to do so, funk about a mile below the mouth of Turtle-creek, in the Monongahela. The goods aboard, worth upwards of 100l. were lost. The plaintiffs paid the defendants 14l. for the boat, being about a dollar per foot in length. They brought assumsit on an undertaking to build a sufficient Kentucky boat, averring it insufficient,…
1Opinion of the Court
President.
If a workman does work insufficiently, he is answerable for all consequences arising from this insufficiency, notwithstanding an acceptance by the employer, without objections; for the employer is not to be presumed acquainted with the execution of the work, and the workman must be. If the loss, in this case, happened through such carelessness or accident, as, in the case of a sufficient boat, would have produced the same effect, you will find for the defendants. But if the loss happened through the insufficiency of the boat, measuring that insufficiency by the expressed intention…
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