Workplace accident

“ Under the old strict common-law rule, a servant or employee could never recover damages for any injury caused in whole or in part by his own negligence, by the negligence of a fellow servant or even by defective machinery, unless he was able to prove beyond peradventure that this existed known to the employer and was the sole and direct cause of the accident. ”

“ The old plan of dealing with injured workmen. Industrial Accidents and Employers’ Liability.—The use of high-powered and complicated machinery in modern times has greatly increased the danger of accident to the workers. By the terms of the common law an employer was obliged to grant compensation to any workman who 412met with an accident because of defects in the machinery or because of any other negligence on the employer’s part. ”

“ The fact of accident carries with it no presumption of negligence on the part of the employer; and it is an affirmative fact for the injured employee to establish that the employer has been guilty of negligence. ”

“ If any charge can be brought against the workmen, or at any rate a large proportion of their number, it is that of utter indifference or carelessness with regard to danger of causing injuries or death to one another. Not that in cases of sudden accident men would have hesitated to risk limb or life for the sake of helping. ”

“ And further, if the employe himself has been wanting in such reasonable care and prudence as would have prevented the happening of the accident, he is guilty of contributory negligence, and the employer is thereby absolved from responsibility for the injury, although it was occasioned by the defect of the machinery, through the negligence of the employer. ”

“ The greatest amount of prevention and the largest amount of care exercised by employers anywhere in the world is in those countries which have compulsory or obligatory insurance laws. The reason is very simple: nearly every employer does not think that a [70] catastrophe, due to his negligence, will ever happen. But when you hold him under a compensation act for every accident, big or little, negligent or not, and accidents are happening every day, and there is a good deal of money being paid more or less continually, he will be much more careful. ”

“ The number of accidents to wage-workers, including those that are preventable and those that are not, has become appalling in the mechanical, manufacturing, and transportation operations of the day. It works grim hardship to the ordinary wage-worker and his family to have the effect of such an accident fall solely upon him ”

“ By defining it so that every employment that has an accident is dangerous, and then making the liability as one of the subsequent sections, exactly in proportion to the accidents they have instead of defining certain lines as dangerous, and others as non-dangerous, I think you have a better classification. ”

“ We might have pending in this country a civil war larger than the Civil War of the sixties was and not do as much injury at the present time as the industrial accidents. Fair people, therefore, are going to be willing to have laws that will tend first to prevent accidents, and, second, to fairly compensate for them, and to do it in such way as to be an inducement to both the employer and employe to prevent the accident. We want society protected also. ”

“ The liability of workmen to accidental injury or death is brought under five general classifications, including factories and workshops, electrical industries, mines and quarries, transportation by rail and transportation by water. Of those employed in factories and workshops, probably the most exposed class is the workers in iron and steel. Of 8,456 accidents during the years 1901 to 1905, 4.1 per cent, of the accidents to men employed in rolling mills resulted fatally. According to industrial insurance experience, the fatal-accident rate of electricians and of electric linemen is excessive. ”

“ All the evidence to the present time is that employers are most careless where there is nothing for which they are held responsible but negligence. They are enormously more careful when they are held for every accident that happens. Experience all over the world has shown this to be true, and I want to add one thing that is almost more important still; they are still more careful in countries where they are not even held individually responsible, but are only held responsible for the payment of insurance premiums. ”

“ The accident must arise out of and in the course of the employment. In each case it will have to be determined whether the workman was at the time of the accident in the course of his employment, and whether the accident arose out of the employment. ”

“ Three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury—a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employés is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours a day. ”

“ From the American Federation of Labor officers I find that their estimate is that the dangerous machinery that now runs at high speed is also the cause of the increased reports of non-serious accidents, and from an insurance company of Germany I find that accidents of a trivial nature have increased, while those of a fatal nature have decreased, and that the employers are penalized for their negligence. It seems to me that where there is a liability to penalize the employer for negligence it causes him to be more careful in protecting the lives of his workmen. ”

“ Causes to a person employed in a factory or workshop such bodily injury as to prevent him on any one of the three working days next after the occurrence of the accident from being employed for five hours on his ordinary work, written notice shall forthwith be sent to the factory inspector for the district.
If the accident arises from special causes defined as machinery moved by power, boiler explosions, escape of gas or steam, or use of hot liquid or molten metal, the casualty has to be reported to a Certifying Surgeon as well as to the Inspector. ”

“ Article 93 Where the employing unit compels labourers to operate against the established rules and under unsafe conditions, thus causing major accident of injuries and deaths, and serious consequences, persons who are held responsible shall be investigated for criminal responsibility according to law. ”

“ That was carried to the same court and the Court held that the Legislature was entirely within its rights and had power to so declare. I think that might have some bearing upon this question.
I would like to ask the Chairman if the effect of this is not virtually to declare all occupations hazardous occupations in view of the following facts: That the law would in any event be a nullity if no accidents happened in any given employment, and the moment an accident does happen in that employment, it is declared to be a dangerous employment ”

“ On receiving the report of an accident related to work safety, the persons in charge of the local people's government concerned and of the department in charge of work safety supervision and administration shall, according to the requirements of the emergency plans for accidents related to work safety, immediately rush to the accident scene to organize a rescue. ”

“ I got from ten societies similar to the United Charities of Chicago, in ten of the largest cities of the country, something over one hundred accident cases, and I have a couple of charts which show the kind of compensation that was obtained by those one-at-a-time, obscure accidents, and then what happened in the case of the men down at Cherry, where they met their death so dramatically. ”

“ Ordinarily an employer knows when an injury occurs. The law in most of our States compels the employers to report, and yet if the injured person fails to report within a very limited time, his right of recovery is barred. ”

“ There is a difference between, on the one hand, tole-rating in the workplace conditions that will result in a certain number of injuries or illnesses, and, on the other, actively misleading the employees who have already fallen victim to those risks of the workplace. ”

“ In ignoring any possible negligence of the employee producing or contributing to the injury, the lawmaker reasonably may have been influenced by the belief that, in modern industry, the utmost diligence in the employer's service is in some degree inconsistent with adequate care on the part of the employee for his own safety; that the more intently he devotes himself to the work, the less he can take precautions for his own security. ”

“ Therefore we ought to have some particular reason for putting the liability upon the employer, and that reason might well be some particular element of danger. By calling an employment dangerous, I think, we do not make it dangerous even if now and then accidents occur in it. I think there are certain elements of danger which we could all point out, and that there are some elements of danger which we could all agree upon as making an occupation extremely hazardous. ”

“ In our view, when the employer's negligence impairs or destroys an employee's health by requiring him to work under conditions likely to bring about such harmful consequences, the injury to the employee is just as great when it follows, often inevitably, from a carrier's negligent course pursued over an extended period of time as when it comes with the suddenness of lightning. Silicosis is as much 'injury,' leading in time as certainly to permanent disability, as scalding from a boiler's explosion. ”

“ If the employee is no longer able to recover as much as before in case of being injured through the employer's negligence, he is entitled to moderate compensation in all cases of injury, and has a certain and speedy remedy without the difficulty and expense of establishing negligence or proving the amount of the damages. ”

“ Employers are required under the Employee's Compensation Ordinance to report any injuries sustained by their employees in work-related accidents. There is no specific legal provision allowing workers to remove themselves from dangerous work situations without jeopardy to continued employment. ”

“ Such laws declare the employer directly liable for all accidents except in case of negligence of the person injured, or in a less extreme form attempt to define who are fellow servants. The effect of such legislation is to place upon the employer the burden of proof that the injured workman was negligent. Such laws apply in a number of States to railroads, but in a very few cases to employees generally. In Europe such laws are more frequent, and are especially favorable to the workman in England and Switzerland. ”

“ Should not that be shifted back upon the employer, and if it is shifted back upon the employer, the employer will, if possible, prevent the accidents, because it costs a great deal less to furnish suitable protection for the machinery than it does to pay damages to the injured employe or to the families of those who are killed. ”

“ A weaver in a cotton factory, where there are hundreds of operatives, is injured by the neglect or carelessness of the engineer in charge of the motive power. Under the common law the weaver could not recover damages from the employer, because he was the co-employé of the engineer. So, one of thousands of employés of a railway system, sustaining injuries through the carelessness of a switchman whom he never saw, could recover no damages from the railway company, both being co-employés of the same employer. ”

“ Under the ordinary American rule continuance at his work by the employé with knowledge of a dangerous defect in machinery or in his place of employment can mean but one thing—a conscious, willing assent to the continuance of the danger to his life or safety, and a voluntary assumption of all chances of personal injury from it, absolving the master from all responsibility for such injuries, even if this defect exists by the master's carelessness or indifference to the employé's safety. ”

“ Is there any reason why, when we have tried to make that provision for the inevitable result of industry, we should refuse to punish those rare cases of misconduct which mean that men have grossly trifled with the safety of their employes? I am not quite clear that there is any good reason. I am confident that an examination of the British decisions, since they put the first compensation act upon the statute books in 1907, would show that there have been very few cases, indeed, in which the employers have been held liable, where they ought not to have been actually punished for misconduct. ”

“ The general doctrine as to the exemption of an employer from liability for injuries to a servant caused by the negligence of a fellow-servant, in a common employment, is well settled. When several persons are thus employed there is necessarily incident to the service of each the risk that the others may fail in that care and vigilance which are essential to his safety. ”

“ And, in our opinion, laws regulating the responsibility of employers for the injury or death of employees, arising out of the employment, bear so close a relation to the protection of the lives and safety of those concerned that they properly may be regarded as coming within the category of police regulations. ”

“ The employer was liable for any injury done to third parties by the negligence of his servants but not for injuries done by one servant to another. If, for instance, there occurred at his mills an explosion which killed and wounded both outsiders and his own workmen, the employer might be sued for damages in respect of person or property by the outsiders or their representatives, but injured fellow-workmen had no legal claim because they were in what was called ‘common employment.’ Complaint against this anomaly had been loud and long. ”