Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/373

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ELL v. NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO.
349

would be himself negligent, and his recovery would be defeated. In either case there would be no occasion for the fellow-servant rule. The basis of the fellow-servant doctrine is not that the servant can, as a rule, be on his guard against his co-servants’ carelessness, but that he takes the risk of such negligence when he makes his contract of employment. It is said that a servant can exert an influence for care upon a fellow-servant of the same grade that he could not exert upon a superior-servant by whom he had been employed and could be discharged, and therefore in the latter case the master is responsible. If this affects the question, then the master should have been held liable, in many cases, where the injured servant could not possibly have exerted any such influence upon the negligent servant.

The books are full of such cases, in none of which was the master adjudged responsible. The courts have held that the rule is “not confined to the case of two servants working in company, or having opportunity to control or influence the conduct of each other, but extends to every case in which the two, deriving their authority and their compensation from the same source, are engaged in the same business, though in different departments of duty.” Holden v. Railroad Co. 129 Mass. 268. Many of the cases holding the master exempt from liability under the fellow-servant rule were, as we have said, cases in which the injured servant could not possibly have exerted influence over the negligent servant. Their separate departments of service, or their usual stations of employment, kept them as a rule, entirely aloof from each other. In the following cases the relation of fellow-servant was held to exist between persons who could exert little, if any, influence over each other. Steamship Co. v. Merchant, 133 U. 8. 375, 10 Sup. Ct. Rep. 397—the carpenter, the porter, and stewardess of a steamship; Railway Co. v. Welch, 72 Tex. 298, 10 S. W. Rep. 529—foreman of a bridge gang, and servants operating train; Elliott v. Railroad Co., 5 Dak. 523, 41 N. W. Rep. 758—a section foreman and a conductor; Fagundes v. Railroad Co., 79 Cal. 97, 21 Pac. Rep. 487—a laborer employed to remove snow from track and a conductor; Baughman v. Superior Court, 72 Cal. 573, 14 Pac. Rep. 207—a conductor and brakeman; Randall v. Railroad Co., 109 U. 8S. 478,