EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY. In general, the liability of employers for injuries sustained by workmen while in their employ and owing to t heir negligence. (See Tont) expression is most frequently employed lo describe certain statutes. recently en ;tete,' in England and the fulled States, with the object of defining and enlarging this emniiion-law liability.
1 person being generally liable, not only for Iris own dime( acts of negligence, lint indirectly for of his servants as well, it might be sup I t 1111 employee, injured iu consequence of suell nee, either on the part of his cm or of a fellow i 1111110y1.1•. would tie 1'1111111'd ret.over from his employer for the in jury so sustained. Bill the of the relation of mu aster and errant nit W, :111(I t he voilld It iM14 of ci lee eNkt 11,i Ve led to .1 nthe limit the liability of to their employees as di tingiii-died from other persons exposed to injury from the manner in which the business is carried on. This rule is to the effect that an employee, on entering upon his service, implicitly engages with his employer to run all the ordinary risks of the service, includ ing the risk of negligence on the part of his fel low servants. The employer is, of course, liable for gross negligence, and for novel and extraor dinary risks involved in the service, as well as for all acts of negligence, whether of the master or of fellow servants. occurring outside the regular service; he is bound to use due diligence in select ing his superintendents, foremen, and other ser vants, to furnish them with suitable appliances and a safe and proper place in which to carry on their work. But here his responsibility stops. It makes no difference whether the negligent fellow servant through whose fault an injury is sus tained is a foreman, whose orders the injured servant was bound to obey, or a fellow servant in the ordinary sense, working side by side with the injured man. The 'risk' voluntarily assumed by the man who enters another's employ covers "all persons engaged under the same employer for the purposes of the same business, however different in detail those purposes may he." With the change in the relations of employer and employee, due to the transformation of in dustrial conditions in recent years, these rules of the common law have taken on a harsh and arbi trary aspect, which under older conditions they did not present. They have accordingly been modified by legislation, both in England and time United States. The earliest statute of this sort was the 'Employers' Liability Act,' passed by Parliament in 1880 (43 and 41 Viet., c. 42), with the avowed object of extending and regulating the liability of employers to make compensation for personal injuries suffered by workmen in their service. It effected this object by exempting. cer
tain classes of workmen from the common-law doctrine, putting them in much the same position with respect to their employer as that occupied by an outsider, and by excluding from the defi nition of fellow servants foremen and others ex ercising authority over the injured employee, making the employer liable for the acts of those exercising a delegated authority under him. It also abolished the immunity of persons and cor porations operating railroads in all cases of in jury suffered by railroad employees in conse quen•e of collisions and other railroad accidents. This statute was followed in 1897 and 1900 by the Workmen's Compensation Acts (.G0 and 61 Viet., C. 37. and 11:1 and 94 Viet., c. 22), which in certain large classes of employment, as rail ways, factories, mines, etc., render the employer liable for any personal injury incurred by a workman by any accident arising out of and in th of his employment.
The American legislation on this subject is of a Ivry diverse character. most of the Stale; hav ing passed one or more statutes intended to en large the liability of the employer of labor. The English net of IMSO has been largely followed. In seine Slates this remedial legislation has been Confined to he employees of railroad companies; and in !-011le the disposition to evade the new rule of liability. by requiring an employee to sign a contract waiving the benefits of such legislation• has been defeated by further forbidding the making of such or declaring them to be null and void. Whether such contracts, apart from statutes forbidding them, arc valid or not, is a question upon which the courts disagree. In England their validity is upheld, while in some of the United States they have been adjudged void, as against public policy and the policy of the statute.
The extension of employers' liability by the legislation above described has led to the insti tution of a novel kind of insurance, known as employer's liability insurance, whereby the em ployer is insured against loss by reason of his liability to his employees; the insurer, in consid eration of a premium paid by the employer, Agreeing to pay all damages with which the lat ter is legally charged or for which he may become legally liable.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bibliography. Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York, Seventeenth Report (1899), Economic and Social Aspects: Report of Industrial Com mission: (a) Lindsay, Report on Railway Labor in the United States (Laws and Court Decisions in Appendix) ; (b) IV. "Transportation" (Evi dence of Witnesses) ; (c) V. "Laws." See also Dresser, Employer's Liability _lets (Saint Paul, 1902). Sec LABOR PROBLEM; AlASTEB AND SER VANT; TRADE UNIONS.