Sullivan v. Rowe

Decided February 28, 1907

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1907-02-28

Tort for personal injuries incurred on June 15,1904, while in the employ of the defendants, who were contractors engaged in digging a trench for a drain, from being struck on the head by an iron buffer which dropped from a Carson trench- machine while the plaintiff was at work beneath it assisting in shoring up a trench eighteen feet in depth. Writ dated July 16, 1904.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““In our opinion the falling of the buffer was under the circumstances in itself evidence of negligence”.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Erickson v. Meier & Frank Co.

Relies on Cassady v. Old Colony Street Railway Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1907-02-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently December 1932

1 federal appellate · 6 state decisions

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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Loring, J.

¶1In our opinion the falling of the buffer was under the circumstances in itself evidence of negligence. This disposes of the fifth request and also of the request that the jury be directed to find for the defendant. Although the plaintiff in his evidence went beyond showing that the buffer fell, he did not go far enough to deprive him of the case made by the falling of the buffer. The case in this respect comes within Cassady v. Old Colony Street Railway, 184 Mass. 156.

¶2 *504Taking the instruction as a whole, it is not subject to the complaint now made, that the jury were not properly instructed as to the burden of proving negligence.

¶3Evidence of the condition of the bolt, immediately after thy accident was admissible.

¶4Exceptions overruled.