Historical Perspectives
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 18 |
A Minor and a Mineshaft
A Tragic Accident
BY FRANK GIBBARD
The El Paso Consolidated Gold Mining Company (El Paso) was organized in 1894 with an original capital outlay of $900,000.1 El Paso owned mining claims on Beacon Hill, in the Cripple Creek mining district. By the end of 1903 it had extracted ore from its claims with a gross value of over $1.6 million.[2]In 1904 alone, it extracted an additional $1.3 million from the claims.[3] During this period the company paid sizeable dividends to its shareholders.
Sometime before 1902, El Paso found it necessary to abandon one of its original mine shafts on Beacon Hill, in a claim known as the Australia lode.[4] The shaft was 200 feet deep and posed an obvious hazard to anyone who might fall into it. The company securely covered the old shaft with wooden planks.
Around that time, the company permitted Allen T. Richardson and his family to build a house on its property, just 110 feet from the abandoned shaft.[5] If a home next to an old mineshaft on a property full of mine tailings does not seem like prime real estate, at least the price was right: the company did not charge the Richardsons anything to build on its property.
The Richardson home wasn't the only property nearby. Within 400 feet of the abandoned mineshaft, about 15 or 16 families, including around 20 children, lived in the new "Beacon Hill" neighborhood.[6] The younger Beacon Hill residents, like most children, were prone to exploration, and they often treated the mine tailings dumped on the property as their playground.
Meanwhile, over the years, the boards placed over the abandoned shaft deteriorated. In 1904, an El Paso employee laid some boards crosswise over the old boards, but he did not examine the old boards to see whether they were securely fastened and he did not put in any new stringers to help secure the boards in place.[7] Two years later, another employee found the shaft "practically uncovered" and put in some new boards to replace those that were missing.[8] But again, he did not inspect the remaining boards or put in new stringers. The slipshod maintenance of the mine cover, and the presence of children nearby, created the conditions for a tragic accident.
The Accident
One of the children who lived on the El Paso property was Allen Richardson Jr. On July 2, 1907, his mother told 9-year-old Allen to go empty some chicken feed into a hole near the abandoned shaft. At the same time, she gave his brother William another chore to do. The boys left the house together. William walked around a greenhouse, while Allen headed downhill to the hole to dump the chicken feed.
Allen wound up near the abandoned shaft. Its allure proved irresistible. William saw Allen bending over the boards covering the shaft and placing his hands on one of the boards. Other witnesses saw Allen walking on the boards and stomping on them. Then, the inevitable happened: one of the boards upended or broke and began to slip into the hole. Allen tried to jump off the board, but he tripped. He yelled "Mamma!" and then he fell into the hole, headfirst.[9] The fall proved fatal.
The Lawsuit
Allen's parents sued El Paso in Teller County District Court for negligence resulting in their son's death. They supported their suit with a Colorado statute, originally passed in 1903, requiring that "all abandoned mine shafts, pits or other excavations endangering the life of man or beast shall be securely covered or fenced."[10]After the parties presented their evidence, El Paso moved for a directed verdict, arguing that both the pleadings and the evidence were insufficient to support a verdict in favor of the parents. The district court granted El Paso's motion, and the parents appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.
The Appeal
El Paso raised a gauntlet of defenses to the parents' appeal. Some involved traditional issues of statutory interpretation, while others concerned issues surrounding responsibility for the costs of protecting the public from abandoned or decommissioned structures that pose an...
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