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225 Mass. 258

Moore' Case

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 28, 1916

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1916-11-28

<p> Workmen’s Compensation Act. Elevator. </p> <p>If one, who is employed to operate an elevator by means of a rope, while he is transporting two fellow workmen leaves his post of duty at the rope and engages in a playful scuffle on the elevator with one of the other workmen, during which his.foot gets over the edge of the elevator floor and his heel is caught and injured, it cannot be found that his injury was one arising out of his employment within the meaning of the workmen’s compensation act.</p>

Relies on McNicol's Case · Diaz's Case · Harbroe's Case

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1916-11-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently April 1952

12 state decisions

5019161920193019401950decided

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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De Courcy, J.

¶1The employee operated an elevator, which was controlled by means of a rope at the side of the car. Two other employees, Bourne and Patrowsky, were being carried on the elevator; and it was ascending from the first to the second floor at the time of the accident.

¶2On conflicting testimony the arbitration committee, and later the Industrial Accident Board, .found in substance that Moore left his position at the elevator rope and took hold of the colored boy Bourne by the chest; that Bourne pushed him back and he (Moore) fell down, and that in the scuffle or “fooling” Moore’s heel was caught and injured. The finding of the board that the injury “occurred as the result of fooling between Moore and Bourne” is as conclusive on the employee as the verdict of a jury. It must stand if there was any evidence to warrant it. Diaz’s Case, 217 Mass. 36. An examination of the record shows that the finding was amply supported by the testimony of Patrowsky, corroborated by that of the foreman Graff.

¶3On the facts as found the board rightly ruled that the employee’s injury “did not arise out of his employment.” His foot got beyond the edge of the elevator floor in consequence of a scuffle in which he himself was the aggressor and after he had abandoned his post of duty at the elevator rope. The injury thereby suffered did not originate in any risk connected with and caused by his employment. See Wrigley v. Nasmyth Wilson & Co. Ltd. 6 B. W. C. C. 90; Clayton v. Hardwick Colliery Co. Ltd. 7 B. W. C. C. 643; McNicol’s Case, 215 Mass. 497; Harbroe’s Case, 223 Mass. 139.

¶4 Decree affirmed.

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