Boyle's Wisconsin Safe-Place Law



Chapter One: Nature of Safe-Place Law
    (h) Inducement for the Law
The original safe-place statute dealt only with conditions of employment and was enacted at a time when widespread disapproval was being expressed concerning the workman's inability to obtain compensation for injury sustained in the course of employment. The inducing cause of the statute has been explained in these words, "This is an age of industrial progress. Mechanical power and appliances are in use to almost the fullest extent, both in the factory and on the farm. The flail and scythe have long since disappeared. Labor-saving machines were invented to act as a substitute for hand work and power in nearly every industrial pursuit, and their use has contributed largely to the welfare of mankind. As an incident to the increase of mechanical devices and power, there followed innumerable accidents as a result of their use, and it then dawned upon the lawmaking power that life, limb, and health must not be sacrificed for the benefit of utility. This realization was the inducing cause of the enactment of the safe-place statute." [16] The statute itself mentioned "freedom from danger to the life, health or safety of employes". [17] But the legislature might also have had a subtle objective in passing this law. It did not intend the safe-place statute, with its requirement for showing defect and causation, to be complete rectification of the ravages technological progress was working on the laboring man. The legislative ideal was to have society, through the agency of the employer, compensate for all employee injuries which industry had a hand in producing -- irrespective of the employee's right to such compensation under common-law rules of fault and causation. Such was the philosophy in which the Worker's Compensation Act was cast. [18] The Worker's Compensation Act attempted appeal to employers by scaling compensation down from common-law levels, and by making it the exclusive remedy. Under the terms of the Act, however, employers could elect not to take part in such social-benefit scheme. It might have been this annoyance which prompted the enactment of the original safe-place statute -- in the belief that more stringent duties of care, would make it uncomfortable for an employer remaining outside the Act. [19] In any event the safe-place statute was a complement to the Worker's Compensation Act in the legislative endeavor to strengthen the position of the injured employee. [20] And if a broad humane purpose was not apparent at the time of the statute's creation, it soon became so with the amendment which extended its strict requirements to public buildings. Then the legislative objective was clearly shown to be as full protection of life, limb and health as, in these complex commercial times, reasonably can be obtained. And such is the prevailing spirit of the law. [21]

Conversion Table Wis. 2d to N.W. 2d or N.W.

16. Dugenske v. Wyse, 194 Wis. 159, 164 (Doerner, J. 1927).

17. Wis. Stat. Sec. 2394-41(11) (1911).

18. "The law [Workmen's Compensation] is a long step towards an ideal system requiring every consumer of any product of human industry, as directly as practicable, to pay his ratable proportion of the fair money cost of those things which he necessarily, or reasonably, destroys in conserving his life and welfare, -- personal injury losses, not intentionally incurred, losses whether through the fault of the employer or employee, or without fault of either, being considered as legitimately, an element of such fair money cost as expenditures for raw material, for machinery or wages." Milwaukee v. Miller, 154 Wis. 652, 660 (1913). See also Sadowski v. Thomas Furnace Co., 157 Wis. 443, 449 (1914): "From the viewpoint of modern conditions, modern needs, and modern conceptions of moral obligations to those engaged as employees in supplying the necessary and legitimate requirements of mankind, and that subjects produced to that end necessarily embody the personal injury losses incident thereto, so that the hand of the employer, in repairing such a loss, is but a link in a chain reaching from the field of production in which it accrued to and terminating with that of consumption, -- all cast of unreasonable burden upon employers vanishes and there arises that of a legislative recognition of serious faults in the old system, endeavor, as fully as practicable, to remedy them, and intent that efforts in that regard shall be taken as broadly as the language used to express them will reasonably permit and is appropriate to carry out the beneficent purpose"; Crombie v. Immel Const. Co., 196 Wis. 319, 323 (1928): "That statute was enacted for a very beneficent purpose. It has for its object the promotion of justice. If invoked in moderation and sound discretion it will abundantly justify its existence."

19. "These [safe-place] statutes are quite drastic, but there is no mistaking the legislative intention. The remedy of the employer is to bring himself within the Workmen's Compensation Law. Statutes mentioned were intended to make it uncomfortable for employers who fall to come in under the Compensation Act." Puza v. C. Hennecke Co., 158 Wis. 482, 486 (1914); Wasley v. Kosmatka, 50 Wis. 2d 738, 743 (1971).

20. Thus the whole field wherein employees in the course of their employment may be injured, was covered -- common law standards of compensation, recoverable in the common law way, being left undisturbed as to any employer not coming under the new system [Workmen's Compensation] so as to waive the defense of contributory negligence, the absolute duty was created of accomplishing physical results for prevention of industrial accidents and the industrial commission was empowered with authority to supervise and coerce as to performance of such duties. The legislative purpose is manifest." Sadowski v. Thomas Furnace Co., 157 Wis. 443, 447 (1914); Wasley v. Kosmatka, 50 Wis. 2d 738, 742 (1971).

21. Du Rocher v. Teutonia Motor Car Co., 188 Wis. 208, 211 (1925): "The safe-place statutes and the public building statutes contained in ch. 101 of the statutes were enacted for the purpose of protecting human life, limb, and health."; Bent v. Jonet, 213 Wis. 635, 639 (1934): "The objective of the statute is to insure safety by the broadest sort of provisions with respect to the kind of places affected."; Gibson Auto Co. v. Finnegan, 217 Wis. 401, 410 (1935): "The objects to be attained are declared to be the protection of the life, health, safety, and welfare of the employees and frequenters."; Frion v. Coren, 13 Wis. 2d 300, 303 (1961): [Quoting from Bewley v. Kipp, 202 Wis. 411, 414 (1930)], "It was the purpose of the legislature to secure the safety of buildings where the public gathered or to which persons resorted in numbers. That was the dominant purpose."


Revised October 7, 2001

Top