A HARD CASE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 439, 22 December 1898, Page 15

A HARD CASE.

What appears to be an unjust decision was recently given in an American court. The circumstances of the case were these, says the Horseman :— A boy named Davis was, it appears, injured by a fall sustained from a horse, and caused by a defective strap. The boy, it is admitted, pointed out to the trainer that the strap was defective, but the trainer ordered him to get up or go about his business. We all know what exercise boys may do if they elect to disobey trainers, and it is not to be wondered at that the lad decided to take his chances, got up, the strap broke, and he was injured. That seems to be the history of the race in a nutshell. The case finally reached the Supreme Court, which took the extraordinary view that when the boy got up, knowing that the strap was defective, and likely to break, he undertook all coincident risks, and, therefore, was not entitled to recover. This is to say, that, in pointing out to the trainer that the strap was defective, he acknowledged that he knew its condition, and, therefore, accepted all risks of injury that might ensue if the strap broke. Justice Knowlton did not agree with this view of the case, nor will any justly-minded man who understands the ways of training stables. The members of the bench can have given no weight to the circumstances surrounding the case. They apparently did not attach any importance to the fact that discipline is remarkably strict in a training stable. The boys must do us they are told or they must go. In the words of one of Hawley Smart’s best characters, if the trainers “ take a notion to keep tigers, they must do ’em properly or go.” The boy in question was hardly a free agent indeed he was nothing of the sort, and while it may be good law to hold that because he pointed out the rotten condition of the strap to the trainer he accepted all risks, it would be but common justice to hold that that act laid the trainer and his employer liable for the damage done. It is all very well to say that everyone is a free agent; perhaps men among men are in the

eye of the law ; but a ninety pound boy in a training stable, doing business with a man of ordinary size, is not a free agent in any sense of the word, especially when the horses are ready for their work and the signal has been given to mount. The boy was hurt because the materials furnished him to do his work with were defective; yet because he discovered this fact, and drew the attention of the defendant’s agent to it, _ the boy can recover nothing—he knew the material was rotten, and yet because he knew it, because he was intelligent enough to know it, he is barred from recovering damages for injury. What. would have happened had he done as the court implies he should have done in the circumstances—refused to mount ? He would have been thrust from the premises as speedily as possible, perhaps his departure would have been accelerated physically, for men have been known to kick exercise boys from their grounds, and then he would have been without the means of earning a livelihood, branded as insubordinate, and thrown out on the world without a character or credential.