Page:Address as the ABA president.pdf/10

 ALABAMA.

The law regulating the liability of employes [sic] for injuries received by the neglect of fellow employes [sic] has occasioned much discussion in the American courts. This has been especially true in cases of employes [sic] of railroad companies.

The English rule, as established by Lord Abinger in Priestly vs. Foster, 3 Mees. & W. 1, followed by Chief Justice Shaw in Farwell vs. Boston and Worcester Railroad Company, 4 Met. (Mass.), 49, and by other American cases, that the duty of the employer is discharged when he uses ordinary care to secure competent men in all branches of his business, and that having done that he is not responsible for any injury sustained by one employe [sic] through the neglect of another, however gross, and that the relation of, or subordination among, co-employes [sic] does not in any manner affect the rule, has been of late greatly infringed upon, if not entirely denied, by some of the American state courts. Ohio, Kentucky, and Wisconsin, with others, seemed rather inclined to follow the civil law in that respect. In Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company vs. Collins (2 Duvall, 114), decided in 1865, Judge Robertson held that where the injured employe [sic] is subordinate and inferior in authority to him by whose negligence he was injured, the reason of the English rule ceases, and the employer becomes liable. In a recent case of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company vs. Ross (112 U. S. 377), the Supreme Court of the United States held, in an elaborate opinion delivered by Mr. Justice Field, that where the injury is sustained by the neglect of a superior whose act may be considered the act of the company, the company is liable.

Alabama, which for many years by her Supreme Court adhered (as I am informed), to the EnglighEnglish [sic] rule, has by a recent act of her legislature adopted the rule of the civil law, making the employer liable to his servant for the culpable neglect of his fellow servant.

The act is a cautious and well-guarded one, and while