George Maricic

Lived in Ostheim, Germany before immigrating in April 1911, Passenger record shows he and Simon Kosovec both immigrated going to Milos Gostovic in Calumet Michigan, Milos is Simon Kosovec brother-in-law, Juro's passenger record shows, a step-brother as Alex Kosovec.

ACCIDENT NO. 29 – May 31, 1911 - George Maricic, Tamarack Mine.

George Maricic died in the hospital about 10 minutes after reaching there from fatal injuries received on this day. He was an Austrian laborer employed at the time at the 14th level, South Side of No. 3 Shaft, Tamarack.

Justice Rule conducted an inquest over his body, at which time the following witnesses testified:

John Eddy: “We were filling a car and had a big rock that we could not handle well, so we put a rope around it to move it with the engine. I went back about 200 feet to run the engine. Moving this rock with the engine must have shifted other loose rock in the pile, and one rolled down and struck him, knocking him off the sollar. I heard someone holler, and I went back and found Maricic on the track.”

Thomas Hosking: "I saw the place where the accident happened. It looked alright. There was a pile of dirt and the men were tramming there before supper. I was eating supper when I heard the two men were hurt. I asked if there was any loose that fell on him, and they said no — they were pulling a rock with the engine, and another rock rolled down and struck Maricic and knocked him off the sollar."

Verdict: “We, the jury, agree that the said George Maricic came to his death on the 31st day of May, A. D. 1911, at the 14th level, South of No. 3 Shaft, Tamarack Mine, by being accidentally struck by a rolling rock while he was in the act of filling a car.”

The Calumet News
May 31, 1911
Wednesday
Page 8

TAMARACK TRAMMER IS KILLED BY ROLLING ROCK

George Malchich is Victim of Fatal Accident at No. 3 shaft. Single Man and Lived Here but Short Time.

George Malchich died at the Tamarack hospital about 1 o’clock this morning as a result of injuries sustained shortly after midnight, at the No. 3 shaft, by being struck by a rolling rock. The accident occurred on the fourteenth level, south side, the victim being struck while in the act of filling a car. Malchich was a single man, 22 years of age, and had been a resident of this country only about six weeks, coming here from Croatia, where he is survived by two brothers, his only relatives. He was a member of the St. Michael Servian society, whose members will attend the funeral in a body. Services will be held at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, with interment at the Lake View cemetery. Acting Coroner Richard B. Rule of Tamarack was notified of the accident and impaneled the following Jury: William Schenk, David Roberts, Dan McCarthy, Thomas Medlyn, William J. Pascoe and Julius Imhoff. After hearing the evidence, the Jury returned a verdict of accidental death in accordance with the above.

Iliaj Maresich estate of George Maresich be granted to Louisa Lesh

Lesh v. Tamarack Mining Co., 186 Mich. 399 (1915)
June 7, 1915 · Michigan Supreme Court · Docket No. 42
186 Mich. 399

Lesh v. Tamarack Mining Co., 186 Mich. 399 (1915)
June 7, 1915 · Michigan Supreme Court · Docket No. 42
186 Mich. 399

LESH V. TAMARACK MINING CO.

1. Master an» Servant — Mines and Mining — Negligence — Fellow-Servants.

Where a trammer employed in defendant’s copper mine was engaged in cutting out ore from a stope which bad not been timbered, and the attention of the miners employed in the work of preparing the shaft for other laborers bad been called to a rock which other employees considered as dangerous, and they had replied that they would take care of it in about fifteen minutes, and advised decedent that it was safe to work below the rock, which, during the delay, fell and injured decedent, the miners so engaged were fellow servants of the trammers who assumed the risk of their negligence.

• 400

2. Same — Assumed Risk — Proximate Cause — Negligence.
Decedent assumed the risk of the obvious dangers connected with his employment, and where it was apparent to him and his co-employees that an overhanging rock in the stope, in which they were working was likely to fall, and decedent continued to work under it, relying on the promise of the miners to blast the rock in about fifteen minutes, the proximate cause of the injury was not the negligence of such miners but the act of decedent in remaining at his work subject to a known and imminent danger. ■
3. Same — Promise to Remedy Danger — Assumed Risk.
No promise of the miners that they would blast the rock which plaintiff complained about as dangerous could be treated as given in a representative capacity, so-as-to-be binding upon the defendant mining company; nor was a promise on their part to remedy the existing danger sufficient to charge the defendant with liability for negligence.

Error to Houghton; Cooper, J.

Submitted' April 20, 1915.
(Docket No. 42.)
Decided June 7, 1915.

Case by Louisa Lesh, as administratrix of the estate of George Maresich, deceased, against the Tamarack Mining Company for the negligent killing of the decedent. Judgment for defendant on a verdict directed by the court.

Plaintiff brings error.

Affirmed.

Le Gendre & Driscoll, for appellant.

Allen F. Rees {Rees, Robinson & Petermann, of counsel), for appellee.

Plaintiff, as administratrix of the estate of George Maresich, deceased, brought this suit to recover damages for fatal injuries sustained by the deceased at about 11:50 p. m. on May 27, 1911.

Deceased was working for defendant as a trammer. • The injury occurred in the 14th level of defendant’s North Tamarack shaft in consequence of the deceased being struck by a cone-shaped piece of rock weighing over six tons. This rock rolled down through a stope and mill, and struck the deceased, while he and two other trammers were engaged in loading another rock from the sollar - into a tram car, in said level. Before this rock rolled down, it had been standing on the footwall and leaning against a battery in the stope, about 25 feet above the place where the deceased was working when he was struck by it. It had been standing and leaning in that position for at least four days before the accident.

Plaintiff called for cross-examination under the statute, Thomas Hosking, defendant’s shift boss, and also the deceased’s two trammer partners, who were the only witnesses sworn. At the close of plaintiff’s evidence, the trial court, on defendant’s motion, directed a verdict in favor of defendant, and a judgment accordingly followed. There was no motion for a new trial, and the plaintiff brings the case here on writ of error. This was a copper mine. The copper rock lay between two other slanting strata of rock, the upper of which is called the hanging wall, and the lower, the footwall. These walls were composed of solid rock, and the general pitch of the vein is about 37 or 38 degrees from the horizontal. The shaft at this level was east from the footwall. A crosscut was run west from the shaft through the footwall to connect with the 14th level. This level ran north and south, and was about 20 feet wide and 16 or 18 feet high, and was a permanent passageway in the mine. The accident happened about 800 or 900 feet south from the intersection of the crosscut and level. The stope in front of which it happened, was the first stope south of the crosscut. The level ran about 800 feet south from this stope. The levels are 100 feet apart, and the stopes when completed are nearly 100 feet high.

In the stope where the accident occurred, there were three rows of batteries, from 6 to 8 feet apart. It was a regular working stope in defendant’s mine, where drilling, blasting, and tramming were going on in the usual way. Two miners were working in it at the time. The stope was being developed by excavating all of the copper rock from between the hanging and footwalls.  It was timbered and being timbered with large stull timbers, which extended from the foot to the hanging walls, about 25 feet from the level. In the level were permanent car tracks upon which tram cars (of 2% tons capacity) were operated in conveying the rock to the shaft. In mining out the copper rock from this stope by the miners, it was passed or thrown downward along the footwall to the level, through places in the stope called mills. These mills were separated by the batteries. Three stulls placed close together, and put in at the pitch of the vein, ordinarily constituted a battery. These batteries were 2% feet or more in diameter. They were situated from 6 to 8 feet apart, up and down, and crosswise of the stope. No guards were provided to prevent rock rolling from the stope or mills into the level. In fact, the object was to get the rock down to the level. At the side of the car track, in the level at the bottom of the mills, sollars were constructed. A sollar is a place or platform, from which the trammers shovel or throw the rock into the car. Dynamite was used in mining and excavating the rock from the vein. When blasts were set off, the vein rock would be blasted into chunks of various sizes. The mining and excavating of the rock were done by men called miners. The dynamite was kept under lock and key. The trammers were not furnished with, or permitted to use any dynamite. 

In referring to the miners’ duties, the shift boss testified:

“Sometimes, if the miners haven’t any drilling to do, or can’t do nothing on their machine, they would be running rock. If they are working up back in the stope, and blast, they don’t run that rock down to the sollar for the trammers to take from there. That’s the duty of the trammers to take it from the stope. If there isn’t any on the sollar — that is, further up — they go up and run it down themselves. And when I say the only thing they have to do was to shovel rock and push cars, I mean in addition to that, if it was necessary,- they had to go up stope and run this rock down to the sollar where they could get at it; they had to get their own dirt to fill the car. If, in doing that, any danger arose in running it down, it was up to them to see they didn’t get hurt. Not to my knowledge, it never was the duty of the miners. The men running the rock down the rock pile could see the danger for himself. So when I said it was the miners’ duty in every respect to take care of the safety of the trammers, overhead, I meant I limit that to the hanging wall and the pile. That’s up to them, the trammers, running the rock down the sollar.”

Kosovac, one of the trammers, testified:

“Now our business as trammers was to take the rock, the miners broke out there, and it was the miners’ business to drill and blast the rock out, so that we could take it away. * * * Yes; when there is lots of rock in the stope, and they [the trammers] shovel the bottom, the rocks come down themselves. When we get none on the sollar we go and roll it down with the shovel.”

In other words, as we understand the record, the trammers frequently went up into the stopes' to get down the loose rock lying on the footwalls; that was a part of their regular duty. Sometimes, as in this instance, large rocks would be blasted, and loosened from the vein, and would rest on the footwall, and it would be necessary to blast and break them.
The places where the trammers worked were prepared by miners and their timber-men. The deceased, a young man 23 years of age, born in Croatia, had been in this country three months, and was injured while working on his twenty-third shift. He had not worked in a mine before. His associate trammers were men of experience in the work.
At about 15 minutes to 12 o’clock on the night of the accident, the trammers placed a car for loading on the track in front of the mill. The rock which caused the injury was leaning against the third battery up from the level. It was about 4 feet thick and 9 feet long. The trammers noticed this rock.

What took place is thus described by the trammer Kosovac:

“Maresich said that it wasn’t safe to work under that rock. He told me to call the miners and ask them whether it was safe to work under that; then I called the miners. I asked the miners whether it was safe to work under, and they said, ‘Yes.’ I asked them to blast it, and they said they would blast it at midnight. And that would be our dinner time, on night shift. We trammers were down below the rock, and the miners were up above it. No, I couldn’t see the rock as well from under as the miners could from above. They were looking at it. No; they only said it was safe; that the rock was safe. Yes; they said they were going to blast at midnight. When I took the bar to bar it down, they told me to leave it alone. The miners said they were going to blast this block hole at midnight. When I told the miners — when George and I told the miners the rock would fall down, then they told us— George asked me to ask them whether the rock was safe. They said it was safe. They will blast that rock at midnight. I told George what they said to me. * * * Yes; I did talk to these miners that night when we fetch out the last car. That rock, when we take that rock away from there, and I talk to George there, and I tell George that I am afraid of that rock; it is liable to come down. It was 14 minutes to 12. That was the time that I did talk to George. George told me to ask the miners. I tell the miners to go and look at that rock, because I am afraid ‘he’ ain’t very solid, and to go and blast it. * * * This accident happened just about 5 minutes after that. I did see ‘him’ up in the stope; that ‘he’ was standing up. I took the bar and went up in the stope and try to bar ‘him’ down; but the miners tell me not to do it — let it go. Yes; it looks to me that ‘he’ will come down, and we was afraid of it. Yes; I did tell George about it.”

Q, “Now, anybody who went up in the stope and looked at that rock could see exactly what you saw, couldn’t he?”

A. “Yes, it would be just the same. The miners told us it was safe, and we was work there. But nobody could see more than I saw who went up and looked at it. Miners couldn’t see any more than I could see.”

The record is entirely silent as to how the rock got away, and rolled down the stope and injured the deceased.
By separate assignments of error the entire charge, paragraph by paragraph, is claimed to be erroneous.

The charge was as follows:

“The motion of the defendant to direct a verdict in favor of the defendant will be granted.”