Goodman v. Pasadena City High School District

MOORE, J.,

pro tem.

The plaintiffs are father and son. They obtained verdicts against defendants for the sum of

[66]

fifteen thousand dollars for injuries received by LeRoy, and in the sum of two thousand dollars for damages suffered by the father by reason of said injuries to the son. The action arose out of an accident which occurred in the mechanics shop of the McKinley Junior High School of the Pasadena City School District March 25, 1930, when the child was thirteen years and nine months of age.

The shop was a spacious, well-lighted room. It was occupied by lathes, a forge and furnace, an equipment for melting metals, tables, benches, old chassis and sundry apparatus. It had been inspected by the safety engineer of the California Industrial Accident Commission and, with all of its contents, it satisfied every reasonable safety requirement. In this room LeRoy had been directed by his teacher to “write up” his lesson, and was assigned to a seat in a comer distant from others engaged in experimental work. The instructor, Francis Appleton, had received a course in technical training in the University of. California, had taught mechanics for nine years and had been with the Pasadena schools for ten years, and in all had acquired over fifteen years of practical experience.

LeRoy had attended the auto mechanics class for more than one semester and had been liberally instructed concerning the use of metals as well as the dangers attendant upon the use of tools and the handling of materials. Just prior to the accident the boy had been in the room half an hour. At the same time about twenty youths were there engaged in their several tasks. Upon completing his assignment, instead of observing the order of the instructor to report to him, LeRoy approached a position about twelve feet from a vise where three boys were engaged in pounding aluminum. In that position he had stood about three minutes when a piece of metal entered his eyeball, which ultimately resulted in its destruction. He had had some experience in breaking aluminum but had never seen any fragments fly.

The record discloses no proof that any school authority knew that aluminum shatters when pounded, although the pupils had been advised with reference to the striking together of steel implements. The students had all been advised to wear goggles when working around the emery wheel, but at no other work in the shop was it deemed