Martin v. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Headnote

Negligence —• master and servant — workmen’s compensation ■—■ when employee injured through negligent operation of elevator while about to leave building where she was employed, on her own business, protected by Workmen’s Compensation Law and cannot recover in action for negligence.

Martin v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 197 App. Div. 382 , affirmed.

Appeal from a judgment, entered August 3, 1921, upon an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department reversing a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict and directing a dismissal of the complaint in an action to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff through the negligence of defendant, her employer. Defendant owned and maintained a large office building, part of which it occupied for its offices and part of which it rented to other tenants. Plaintiff was employed in one of defendant’s departments on the eleventh floor of its building. On the day of the accident, after eating her lunch, she having available time before she was required to resume her work, entered one of defendant’s elevators to descend to the street on a personal errand. As the elevator reached the ground floor, the doors opened, and as the plaintiff was in the act of stepping out, she being the first passenger on the car to do so, the car suddenly shot upwards, the back of the plaintiff’s head came in contact with the upper part of the entrance to the elevator shaft at that point, and her body was forced downward, partly crushed between the floor of the upward-bound car and the wall of the shaft and catapulted into the elevator pit many feet below. The Appellate Division held that plaintiff was protected by the Workmen’s Compensation Law and could not recover in an action of negligence; that she, having a right during the lunch hour to go out on her own affairs, the employer was bound to furnish her with a safe exit from the premises.