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Show HOWELL SAYS LAW FAILS TO PROTLJ i Judge J. A Howell pointed out the fnadequaey and injustice of present conditions wiih respect to laws designed de-signed for the protection of workmen and prefaced his address last night before the Sunday Night dub wrh pome startling statistics The Judge detailed the troubles of injured employes em-ployes Id their efforts to secure redress re-dress under the present law and pointed out a remedy A large audience audi-ence in the Parish house of the Episcopal Epis-copal church closely followed the address. ad-dress. Judge Howell said In part: Courts Offer Only Relief. 'Is it any wonder that In view of these appalling statistics men concerned con-cerned with the nation s welfare have sought of late year6 to solve the question as to who now bears the burden of this apparently exorbitant waste of life and energy. How shall the burden be lessened? And even when It is lessened, how should it be borne? "A6 the law exists at the present time, the oniv means which an injured in-jured employe has for compensation for hlg Inj-irv Is to go to the court and brine an action against his employed em-ployed In the first place, under the law as it has been developed, he cannot can-not In anr cape recover for his Injuries In-juries unless he ran show that his employe- was guilty of negligence and that his injuries resulted from that negligence. Both In Fncland and meriea was firmly established In the law what is commonly spoken of as the assumed risk doctrine and the fellow servant rule, both of which prevent an Injured In-jured employe from recovering from hi employe If the injury was one of the risks which, under this doctrine, f he is required to assume, or If it Is due to the negligence of a co-employe. These legal principles which he-came he-came so firmly fixed in our law do not appear to be either unreasonable or unjust, taking into consideration the conditions which gave them birth. It was the age of hand labor. Conditions Now Changed "With the Jexelopment of our social so-cial and industrial life conditions have entirely changed. The employer now lj generally not an Individual, but an aggregation of Individuals in the form ' . of a corporation employing thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands or men. all receiving employment rind Instruction through numerous agencies agen-cies In the different departments of, the master. Instead of using th ordinary tools! of the farm, the shop or the work shop, well known to all men. they: now use the complicated and little understood mechanisms, often terrible i with mystery to the average man and deadly in their effect If anything!. wrong This is the age of machine! labor. "In our day, when a man is employed em-ployed In and about machinery which few of us completely understand, when he is working at the tremendous pressure of modern Industry, hlmaell in rapid motion and the machines with which he deals even In still more pad-id pad-id motion, it is apparent thai it is not only unreasonable, but unjust, that an ordlnarv workman should run the risk of any defects in the machinery and be responsible if he fails to detect de-tect what Is wrong with the complicated compli-cated appliances he Is required to U6e or work about, or if he fulls to exercise expert care in their handling. han-dling. I have as yet In my reading discovered dis-covered no one, whether he Is an employer em-ployer or a representative of employers, employ-ers, or whether he Is an employe or a repref eutatu e of them, who is not agreed that our present law is totalis total-is inadequate to meet tne conditions i of life in which the relationship of , employer and employe exist. It must be borne in mind, of course, that this law Is not the result of any legislative legisla-tive enactment, but is a system which has been developed by the courts themselves Whatever else, how. xe. Judges hae been accusd of, thy have never been charzed with bring revolu-I revolu-I tionists and the result has been that w hat has been accomplished by them l has been along the line of modifiia-tlons modifiia-tlons of the rules rather than their abrogation The courts developed the theoi 1 that there were certaiu duties which the employer owed to his employe which he could not delegate to his employe in such a wa as to escape responsibility lor their failure of per-lormance per-lormance None of the courts In the various states of the union lay down precisely the same rules with reference refer-ence to the ponsibllitv of the em-p'oyer. em-p'oyer. Suits Are Expensive. The result to the injured employe is this that only Ina lew cases is he permitted to recover wtien Injured, horn S to 12 per cent, and then at the uk of assuming the burden of ascertaining ascer-taining what the law with resp. t to ; his particular case is. which is -x-tremel burdensome and expensive. It developed as time went on a great 1 number of employers, to meet meer the difficulties of the situation, es-I es-I tablished the custom of employing attorneys at-torneys by the ear to protect them from the suits that migit be brought against them by injured employes.1 Once within the presence of the court the employe was held by the court' to be upon an enual footing with his I employer, but the difficulty was fori 'the emp'oye to tet before the court ' I Me knew that his employer had skill-led skill-led attorneys to fight his side of the; battle. Imt where was the injur.-d em- ploye, without work and without money, mon-ey, to obtain the services ot an attorney at-torney to fight his side of the bat-1 I tie? "Another feature which is insepa-1 rable from the present system is the I j inequality of verdicts. For instance.' in my own court, a jury gave a little! girl who lost a part of bet foot $".-I $".-I BOO, and in the same year another Jury I gave a man whose hearing was de-strayed, de-strayed, his eyesight almost totally ; I Impaired, and one side paralyzed, $1," I 600. In certain localities, too, exces-1 sive verdicts under the influence of sympathy have beeq given by juries, though I have not found such is the case here. In eight years I have only been called upon to reduce three verdicts. ver-dicts. Iniquitous Features. "To a ;stpm which was already iniquitoi is another feature has been aJded which makes It even worse, fori nowadays it Is very customary for the j , employer to Insure himself again-t II-i abillt) for his negligence with som Indemnity company Thus the injured! i, employe, when he goei to court does not meet his employer between whom I and himself It would naturally be sup-posed sup-posed some bond of sympathy would! exist, but he meets on the contrary a cold-blooded insurance company,! whose jirime purpose Is to reduce to I B minimum the amo nt which It aafi to pay to make good its contract o insurance. The present system engender: strife and bitterness between employ ST and employe, when such stilte am bitterness should be avoided, am causes untold suffering to Injured workmen and their wives ;.nd children, chil-dren, the mere mention of wnict causes one to shudder. The attempts which have been made to Improve the situation have been varied. In the first place, ih.-.e have been laws enacted In congress and also by the legislatures of the various states, requiring employers to use greater care to prevent Injuries. In-juries. Ah an example or these, we may take the safely appliance law enacted by the national congress "The result accomplished by these laws Is not all that was expected of them The courts and the legisl I-tures I-tures thereupon, and with knowledge of the fact: commenced legislating with respect to the correlative rights of the employer and employe before the courts. The most Important of these laws relating to the employer's Jliabilitv is the law passed in 19iH by con l-i ess, which abrogates almost en-tirelv en-tirelv the assumption of risk doctrine, abolishes completely the fellow servant serv-ant rule, and provides that contributor! contribu-tor! negligence ali- 11 not pre-. ent re-! re-! covery, but may minimize the dam-jages dam-jages recovered. Even all the8e reforms, re-forms, however important n- thev I were have not been regarded as sufficient, suf-ficient, for all of them assume that the employer must be negligent Jn order for the tnj ired employe to recover. re-cover. The theory of the justice of such a proceeding is that the business should not only bear the burden of accidents which are caused by negligence, negli-gence, but all accidents Including those resulting from risl-s Inherent in i the business, which is about 45 per cent of the accidents, and those din-to din-to the negligence of the employe, these being more than half of all aeciib-nfs Such ;i law as this has been in torce In Kngland for a number num-ber of -.ears, but it has now probably ' been abrogated by David IJoxd-I'leorge's IJoxd-I'leorge's comprehensive state Insurance Insur-ance law It was to determine whether such la law should be enacted by congress that the employers" liability and workman s eomnensation commission .was created This commission held extensive heirings. both in relation to the law and the fads of the subject, sub-ject, and recommended the enactment enact-ment of a workmen's compensation law by congress, limited however, to railroad employes engaged in interstate inter-state commerce. The president transmitted trans-mitted the report of the commission, together with tho proposed law. and It was passed by the senate but died a-bornlng in the house of representatives representa-tives Conditions in This State ' Before I close It Is perhaps propel that I should speak briefly of what are the conditions here In our own state, with which naturallv we are primarily concerned It would perhaps per-haps not be fair to sy that the page of Utah legislation for the protection of the employe is blank, though it is so far as his compensation for in-Juiles in-Juiles is concerned, but It Is certainly black in its character, for we still have the doctrine of contributory negligence jn full force and likewise the doctrine of assumed risk We have a st-itute upon the fellow servant serv-ant rule which helped along by a very late decision of our supreme court may be considered to practicality practical-ity abolish If There is no safets appliance ap-pliance law and no law limiting hours ot service except those who are engaged en-gaged in mines, and except women and children There is, of course, no conDensation law whatsoever "The situation can be best lllus-i lllus-i trated by taking a concrete case. Let , us assume that a railroad employe engaged in the inter-late service of the Oregon short Line R illroad company com-pany is injured There is applied to his case when brought Into court the national employers' liability law, and he has a) tnp benefits of It. On the Contrary, lei lit assume that an em-i em-i Ploye is injured under precisely the same circumstances ami in precisely ' the same way upon the Snlt Lake and Ogden. or Bamberger railroad, and the 0id archaic law I still ap-l ap-l plicable. so that as a result of our federated system we have one law applicable to one employe and another an-other to another. Surely ibis Is a condition which should 1m- changed, and therefor.- I have brought it pertinent per-tinent to speak oi ibis subject, because be-cause th,. legislature of the state of I 'ah is about to meet. While I am Inot very hopeful, Judging the legisla ture by Its past that it will enact am hi laws for the benefit of the working-jp working-jp men. eHHcei,iii I, directed against employers, particularly railroads, still 'it do ft seem lo me that Its duty is , plain at least to enart laws shoHsfa tne or modifying the assumed risk .and contributor negligence doctrines doc-trines "If Utah is to keep pace with the i enlightened legislation of her slsti states and oi Mir. countries abroad. then the nexi legislature should en-act en-act in some form a workmen' com-1 com-1 pensailon la K " |