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183 N.C. 830

111 S.E 878

Tritt v. Gloucester Lumber Co.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided May 17, 1922

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1922-05-17

Appeal by defendant -from Shaw, J., and a jury, at December Term, 1921, of TeaNstlvaNia. Action to recover damages for negligently causing tbe death of ■plaintiff’s intestate. There was denial of liability and plea of contributory negligence, and on issues submitted the jury rendered a verdict for plaintiff assessing the damages.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Judgment on the verdict, and defendant excepted and appealed · Decided 1922-05-17

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1951

3 state decisions

201922193019401950decided

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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Per Curiam.

¶1 There were facts in evidence tending to show that on or about 4 June, 1921, plaintiff’s intestate, an employee of defendant company on the logging train in said county, while engaged in his duties .as'brakeman on one of defendant’s trains, fell, or was thrown or jolted off said train and run over and killed. There was testimony on the part of plaintiff tending to show that the falling from the train and the con•sequent death was caused by an unusual, unnecessary, violent jerking of the train, and also because of the defective condition of the roadbed at the place of the injury. There was testimony for the defendant to the •effect that the roadbed was in sound condition where the injury occurred, •and further, that there was no unusual or violent jerking of the train .at the time. In submitting these opposing views, the court, among other things, charged the jury as follows: “Now, the court instructs you that it was the defendant’s duty to provide a reasonably safe place for the plaintiff to work, and if it failed to provide such a safe iilace for him to work, and in consequence of that the death of intestate was caused, and ■those facts are found by the greater weight of the evidence, it is your duty ■to answer the issue 'Yes.’ ” It is the established rule in this jurisdiction that the obligation to provide for employees a safe place to work, or a reasonably sáfe place to work, is not absolute, but it is required that the *831 employer must do tbis in tbe exercise of ordinary care, and a charge tbat omits tbis as an element in tbe standard of duty will be beld for reversible error. Tbis is beld in Gaither v. Cement Co., ante, 450, where tbe correct position as approved and illustrated in numerous decisions is stated for tbe Court in an opinion by Associate Justice Adams. In deference to tbat authority, which we regard as controlling on tbe facts of tbe present record, we are of opinion tbat for tbe error indicated defendant is entitled to a

¶2 New trial.

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