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93 Tenn. 213

Guy v. Lumber Co.

Tennessee Supreme Court

Decided September 28, 1893

Tennessee Supreme Court · decided 1893-09-28

<p>FROM ANDERSON.</p> <p>Appeal in error from tbe Circuit Court of Anderson County. W. R. Hicks, J.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1893-09-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently January 1965

11 state decisions

3018931900191019201930194019501960decided

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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Caldwell, J.

¶1Alexander Guy, as next friend of Charles Guy, brought this action against the Fisher & Burnett Lumber Company, to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been negligently inflicted upon the said Charles Guy by the *214defendant while he was in its employment as a laborer at its mill.

¶2Trial before Conrt and jury resulted in verdict and judgment for the defendant, and plaintiff appealed in error.

¶3Charles Guy, for whose benefit this action is prosecuted, was a minor, thirteen years of age at the time he received the injuries complained of in the declaration, and he is still a minor, under the age of twenty-one years.

¶4Soon after the injuries were inflicted, the father of Ohai’les Guy brought suit against the Eisher & Burnett Lumber Company, in his own right, to recover damages resulting to him from loss of services, etc.

¶5That suit was successfully defended in the Circuit Court and in this Court. In affirming the judgment .of the Circuit Court in that case, this Court adjudged that one Hugh Bailey, who had engaged the services of Charles Guy, was an independent contractor, and that the defendant was, for' that reason, not responsible for the "injuries sued for.

¶6One defense made before the jury in the present action was, that Charles Guy was not in the employment of the defendant, but in the service of Hugh Bailey, an alleged independent contractor, at the time the injuries complained of were received.

¶7In support of that defense, the defendant was permitted, over the objection - of the plaintiff, to *215produce in evidence a copy of the judgment of this Court in the former case.

¶8TJpon no ground was that judgment competent or. admissible as evidence in this case. It would have been competent and admissible as a matter of estoppel, on a plea of. res adjudicata, in an action between the same parties and about the same subject-matter. But it was not so in this case.

¶9Eor the error indicated, the judgment is reversed, and the case remanded for a new trial.

¶10On another trial, inaccuracies in the charge of the Court, upon the subject of independent' contractor, may be corrected by following the definition given and principles laid down in the case of Powell v. Construction Company, 88 Tenn., 692.

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