Burke v. Pittsburg Contracting Co. 220 N.Y. 633

Albert Burke, Respondent, v. Pittsburg Contracting Company, Appellant.

Burke v. Pittsburg Contracting Co., 163 App. Div. 853, affirmed.

(Argued February 1, 1917;

decided February 27, 1917.)

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered April 3, 1914, affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained through the negligence of defendant, his employer. Plaintiff was injured through the collapse of a platform or scaffold upon which he was working. The principal contention of the plaintiff was that he was not furnished a safe place to work and the case was submitted to the jury upon this theory under the Employers’ Liability Act. At the close of the plaintiff’s case the defendant moved to dismiss on the ground that plaintiff had assumed the risk of the place to work, which the court denied under the Employers’ Liability Act, as amended by the Laws of 1910, saying that “ the assumption of risk is neither a question of fact nor a question of law.”

John Ambrose Goodwin and Edmund F. Harding for appellant.

Edgar T. Brackett, Benjamin W. Moore and Leonard F. Fish for respondent.