Duke v. American Museum of Natural History

Headnote

Duke v. American Museum of Natural History, 163 App. Div. 884 , affirmed.

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered May 6, 1914, affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff through the negligence of the defendant, his employer. The plaintiff was injured in the museum building at Seventy-seventh street and Central Park West, borough of Manhattan, New York city, while engaged with a number of other men in lowering an exhibit consisting of a plaster cast attached to a wooden frame or screen from a vertical to a horizontal position on the floor. After the screen had been shifted or tilted

to an angle about forty or forty-five degrees from a vertical position, it suddenly skidded or slipped, some of the men let go of it, others lost their hold and it fell upon the plaintiff and injured him. The theory upon which the case was submitted to the jury was that the defendant’s superintendent negligently allowed a dangerous method of work to be pursued in the lowering of this frame.