Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Convention

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Excerpt from Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Convention: Held in Fruit Growers Hall, Bendersville, Penna., Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, December 15, 16, 17, 1915If the courts shall finally decided that our legislature was withoutably safe wagons, trucks, harness, horses, ladders, pruning apparatus, ropes, chains and farm machinery, and other instrumentalities of your work, and to reasonably guard any dangerous machinery in so far as guarding will not interfere with the operation of such ma chinery. And in addition to the four rules mentioned, it is your constant duty to exercise due care in inspecting and maintaining your premises and appliances in such reasonably safe condition.So long as you observe the duties mentioned you are not respon sible in damages for any injury sustained by an employee in the course of his employment, because such injuries the law ascribes to the risk of the business, which risk the workman is held to have as sumed. This rule' of law may be relied upon by you in any present action brought against you by an injured employee. It constitutes one of the common law defenses known as the assumption of risk. As an illustration of the application of this rule it may be said: If an experienced workman engaged in trimming the branches of a fruit tree should be injured by the falling branches, the fruit grower is not responsible because that is a risk that the workman must as sume. If the driver of your team while conveying fruit to a station is injured by the carelessness of your neighbor's driver, you are not responsible. Your driver assumed the risk of such accident. And again, if you furnish a new ladder of standard construction and ma terial to be used in fruit picking and it is free from defects that would be apparent upbn a reasonable examination of it, you are justi hed in considering such ladder to be a safe appliance, and if by reason of a hidden defect it break and a fruit picker be injured thereby, you will not be liable because under the doctrine of assump tion of risk the fruit picker is held to have assumed the risk of such accident.You will understand that in the illustrations given the absence of liability was due to the fact that you had performed your full duties. But under the existing law, although you should fail to fulfill in some particular the duties imposed upon you, and by reason of such fail ure an injury is sustained by a workman, such workman cannot re cover from you if his own negligence contributed in the slightest degree to the in jury. This rule is known as the common law defense of contributory negligence. Thus, if you furnish an employee with a defective appliance and such defect is known to the employee, he is guilty of contributory negligence if he uses it and is injured there by. As, for instance, if you provide a ladder for a fruit picker and such ladder is apparently unsafe, if the fruit picker uses it and is ih jured thereby, you are not responsible.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.