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116 La. 736

Hunley v. Patterson

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided April 9, 1906

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1906-04-09

<p>Appeal from Civil District Court, Parish of Orleans; Thomas C. W. Ellis, Judge.</p> <p>Action by Marshal Hunley against A. L„ Patterson & Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1906-04-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1951

4 state decisions

20190619101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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PROYOSTY, J.

¶1The plaintiff and other laborers, under a foreman, were laying a sewer pipe in a street. The rules were to brace the sides of the trench, so as to prevent them from falling in when the pipe was being laid; but the bracing material had given out, and the plaintiff, whose part it was to get into the trench and steady the joint of pipe as it was moved into position, hesitated to go in, and said to the foreman; “It looks kind of dangerous.” The foreman answered: “That’s nothing, I think *738that’s solid enough; go ahead.” The sides fell in on plaintiff, and injured his leg.

¶2The plaintiff had been doing the same kind of work for eight months, and the contention is that he knew of the danger and assumed the risk.

¶3The plaintiff is a colored laborer, and was working under the directions of a white foreman. The trench was six feet deep. We think the case is a plain one for the application of the rule that the servant has the right to assume superior knowledge on the part of those under whose orders he is working. A. & E. Eney. of Law, vol. 20, p. 148. The danger was not so evident that plaintiff might not have relied on the supposedly better judgment of the foreman, or that no prudent man would have obeyed the foreman. One of plaintiff’s fellow workmen went into the ditch with him, showing that he, too, did not consider the situation sufficiently perilous to justify opposition to the orders of the foreman.

¶4Judgment affirmed.

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