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SIGNIFICANCE OF FOREIGN DECISIONS
CLARA CEREZO, plaintiff-appellant,
vs.
THE ATLANTIC GULF & PACIFIC COMPANY, defendant-appellant.
G.R. No. L-10107
February 4, 1916
Facts:
This is an action for damages against the defendant for negligently causing the death of the plaintiff's son, Jorge Ocumen, on the 7th of July, 1913, deceased being plaintiff's only means of support. Judgment was entered in a favor of the plaintiff for the sum of P1,250, together with interest and costs. Defendant appealed.
The deceased was an employee of the defendant as a day laborer on the 8th of July, 1913, assisting in laying gas pipes on Calle Herran in the city of Manila . The digging of the trench was completed both ways from the cross-trench in Calle Paz, and the pipes were laid therein up to that point. The men of the deceased's gang were filling the west end, and there was no work in the progress at the east end of the trench. Shortly after the deceased entered the trench at the east end to answer a call of nature, the bank caved in, burying him to his neck in dirt, where he died before he could be released. It has not been shown that the deceased had received orders from the defendant to enter the trench at this point; nor that the trench had been prepared by the defendant as a place to be used as a water-closet; nor that the defendant acquiesced in the using of this place for these purposes. The trench at the place where the accident occurred was between 3 and 4 feet deep. Nothing remained to be done there except to refill the trench as soon as the pipes were connected. The refilling was delayed at that place until the completion of the connection. At the time of the accident the place where the deceased's duty of refilling the trench required him to be was at the west end. There is no contention that there was any danger whatever in the refilling of the trench.
Issue:
Whether or not the plaintiff’s right to recover is based on the Employer’s Liability Act (Act No. 1874)
Held:
Act No. 1874 is essentially a copy of the Massachusetts Employers' Liability Act (Rev. Laws. 1902, chap. 106 secs. 71-79), it having been originally enacted in that jurisdiction in 1887. (Stat. 1887, chap. 270.) The Massachusetts statute was "copied verbatim, with some variations of detail, from the English statute (43 & 44 Vict., c. 42).
This court is not finally concluded by the decision of any other State court or the British court, in their construction of a similar statute, but the opinion of learned courts upon similar questions are entitled to great weight and this is especially true when the statute, from which ours was copied, had been construed prior to its enactment by our legislature." ( Birmingham Ry. and Electric Co. vs. Allen, 99 Ala. 359, 371; 120 L. R. A., 457.)
The right of the master to shift responsibility for the performance of all or at least most of these personal duties to the shoulders of a subordinate and thereby escape liability for the injuries suffered by his workmen through his non-performance of these duties, was, in England, definitely settled by the House of Lords in the case of Wilson vs. Merry (L.R. 1 H.L. Sc. Appl Cas., 326; 19 Eng. Rul. Cas., 132). This was just two years before the enactment of the Employers' Liability Act of 1880, and no doubt the full significance of such a doctrine was one of the impelling causes which expedited the passage of the Act, and chiefly accounts for the presence in it of subsection 1 of section 1.
The cause of Ocumen's death was not the weight of the earth which fell upon him, but was due to suffocation. He was sitting or squatting when the slide gave way. Had he been even half-erect, it is highly probable that he would have escaped suffocation or even serious injury. Hence, the accident was of a most unusual character. Experience and common sense demonstrate that ordinarily no danger to employees is to be anticipated from such a trench as that in question. The fact that the walls had maintained themselves for a week, without indication of their giving way, strongly indicates that the necessity for bracing or shoring the trench was remote. To require the company to guard against such an accident as the one in question would virtually compel it to shore up every foot of the miles of trenches dug by it in the city of Manila for the gas mains. Upon a full consideration of the evidence, we are clearly of the opinion that ordinary care did not require the shoring of the trench walls at the place where the deceased met his death. The event properly comes within the class of those which could not be foreseen; and, therefore, the defendant is not liable under the Civil Code.
Effect upon the Law in this country
The act was not intended to curtail the any of the rights which an employee had under the pre-existing law. Under the act, the defense of contributory negligence would defeat an action for damages.
For the foregoing reasons the judgment appealed from is reversed and the complaint dismissed, without costs. So ordered.
Acknowledgement: Janette Oftana
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