American Decades
The Fellow-Servant Rule and Workmen's Compensation
Changing Workplace.
Between 1910 and 1919 the method of compensating employees who suffered injuries during their employment was fundamentally altered. In many respects this transformation was triggered by changes both in the nation's workplaces and in the relationship between labor and management. In times past, when a worker was hired to perform some service for the person hiring him, the arrangement was considered a simple contract. The employer assumed no responsibility for the safety of his employee other than what would be expected of anyone else: that he not deliberately do anything to the employee that would cause harm. Every worker was expected to be held responsible for his own mistakes or negligence, and common law absolved the employer from any responsibility for an injury to one employee caused by the carelessness of another. That, in essence, was the "fellow-servant" rule. But by the beginning of the twentieth century...
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1910's Law and Justice
