Murphy v. Webster
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Tort for personal injuries occasioned to the plaintiff while in the defendant’s employ by being struck by an elevator car. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Hammond, J., there was evidence tending to prove the following facts. The defendants were tanners, and used in their business a building two stories high, in which there was a freight elevator running from the first to the second floor, a distance of about eleven or eleven and a half feet.
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Tort for personal injuries occasioned to the plaintiff while in the defendant’s employ by being struck by an elevator car. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Hammond, J., there was evidence tending to prove the following facts. The defendants were tanners, and used in their business a building two stories high, in which there was a freight elevator running from the first to the second floor, a distance of about eleven or eleven and a half feet. The elevator was put in at the erection of the building, in 1877, and was constructed and used to carry leather to and from the second story…
1Opinion of the CourtKnowltoh, J.
The evidence in this case fails to furnish satisfactory grounds for an inference, or for anything better than mere conjecture, as to the cause of the accident. The building was only two stories high, and the elevator ran from the lower to the upper floor, a distance of about eleven or eleven and one half feet. The plaintiff was injured by the descent of the car upon him in the elevator well on the lower floor. In the ordinary operation of the elevator, when the ear descended, it struck a dog about a foot above the floor, which threw off the belt and stopped it; but if anything prevented it…
2Cases cited2 opinions
- Taylor v. Carew Manufacturing Co.Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1885
- Taylor v. Carew Manufacturing Co.Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1887
3Cited by11 opinions
- Droney v. DohertyMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1904
- McLennon v. Whitney-Steen Co.Supreme Court of Colorado · 1917
- Ramsdell v. JordanMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1897
- Degnan v. JordanMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1895
- Derringer ex rel. Derringer v. TatleyNorth Dakota Supreme Court · 1916
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