Barrett v. Metropolitan Contracting Co.

This is an action to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by plaintiff while driving a team furnished to him by defendant under the following circumstances: The city of Los Angeles had entered into a contract with defendant whereby the latter had agreed to furnish suitable horses and their harness and wagons to the city for the purpose of doing its street-sprinkling work. The city was to supply the drivers. The teams and wagons were furnished subject to the approval of the city's inspector or his deputies. "Nothing could leave the yard that was not satisfactory to him." In the performance of this contract defendant maintained, in convenient parts of the city, stables where its horses were kept. Each morning a harnessed team was delivered to each of the city's drivers. Each team was attached to a sprinkling wagon, and with the city's driver in charge went on its way. The defendant had a foreman or overseer of its stables and horses, who frequently made the rounds of the stables, but was not permanently at any one of them. Each stable was in charge of one or more stablemen — "stable-bucks," they are called. Touching the powers and duties of these stable-bucks the uncontradicted evidence is as follows: "The authority of the stable-bucks was simply to feed the animals and at times to hook them up." Upon the day of his injury plaintiff, under the direction of a deputy city inspector, took his team, hitched to a sprinkling wagon, and proceeded about his usual duties. There was assigned to him a particular district. His duties were to fill his wagon at convenient water plugs, sprinkle the streets and reload his wagon from the most accessible plug, and so to continue throughout the day. His team upon this day consisted of a horse and a mule. He had not driven them before. At the time of the accident he had refilled and emptied his wagon some fifteen or eighteen times. He had noticed that the horse was high spirited and restive, and seemed to be disturbed at the noise made by the rushing water at the fire plugs. The horse started much more quickly than did its companion, the mule, and when it started did not wait for the mule, but dragged forward the whole of the load. To mount to the driver's seat one was obliged to climb first upon the hub, then upon the tire, and then upon the step below the seat. When filling the wagon it was usual, and was the habit of plaintiff, to tie the lines securely to the seat. When the lines were *Page 118 released the restive horse seemed to regard this as its signal to start and "plunged forward." The plaintiff had filled his wagon at one of the fire plugs, had released the lines, the horse had started, when, noticing that the check rein or a line of the mule's harness was out of place over a hame, he stopped his team and dismounted to arrange it. In doing so he left the brake on, dismounting upon the left-hand side with the lines in his hand. He fastened the lines not to the seat, but to the step just above the wheel. He arranged the harness, returned to mount to his seat, was standing on the tire with the loosened reins in his hand, when the horse started, jerked the tire from under his feet, and precipitated him to the ground with the lines in his hands, the wheel passed over his leg and inflicted the injury. He shouted "Whoa!" as he fell off the wheel, but the team did not stop until the wheel had passed over and crushed his foot.