Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/142

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116
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

that the exercise of reasonable care in making an inspection must have disclosed the defect. Therefore, whether the car was or was not inspected, there was sufficient to justify a verdict that the defendant had been careless in the discharge of its duty to use reasonable care to furnish its employes with safe appliances of every kind, and keep them in safe condition. Railroad Co. v. Herbert, 3 Dak, 38, 8 Am. & Eng. R. R. Cases 85, 116 U. S. 642, 24 Am. & Eng. R. R. Cases 407, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 590. This is one of the master's duties, and the servant upon whom the master in that respect, and is not in the discharge thereof a fellow servant of the employe injured. Railroad Co. v. Herbert, 116 U. S. 642, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 590; Railroad Co. v. Kernan, 78 Tex. 294, 14 S. W. Rep. 663; Fay v. Railroad Co., 39 Minn. 231, 11 Am. & Eng. R. R. Cases 193, 15 N. W. Rep. 241; Condon v. Railroad Co., 78 Mo. 567; Bushby v. Railroad Co., 107 N. Y. 374, 14 N. E. Rep. 407; Ell v. Railroad Co., 1 N. D. 336, 48 N. W. Rep. 222. When plaintiff stepped upon the foot-board of the engine it appears to have been a short distance from the car, and was backing down towards it slowly. Plaintiff stood upon that portion of the foot-board which was on the short side of the curve of the switch. On the other side, standing also on the foot-board, was the foreman of the switching crew. He guided the link into the opening, while plaintiff reached over to the flat-car to pick up a pin lying there, for the purpose of using this pin to complete the coupling. While in this position he was squeezed between the locomotive and the car, and injured, because, as the evidence demonstrated, there was. too little space between them, owing to the undue shortness of the drawbars both of the car and of the engine. He rests his right to indemnity upon this conduct of defendant in permitting a car with so short a draw-bar to be placed upon its track for use, and in augmenting the danger by bringing it into connection with an engine whose draw-bar was likewise, as appears from some of the evidence, much shorter than the draw-bars in ordinary use. Each of these draw-bars was, according to some of the evidence, so much shorter than those in common use that we are inclined to the view that the jury were justified in holding master devolves its performance represents the