PARIS – Community farming customs and the need to provide a reasonably safe workplace are central to a civil trial Tuesday being tried in Oxford County Superior Court.

Richard and Frances Jones and their son Wallace, owners of the 300-acre Pleasant View Farm atop Jones Road, are being sued for civil damages by Adrien Morin Sr., who lost a finger while working at the farm’s sawmill.

Morin filed a six-count complaint just over a year ago, claiming he was “permanently impaired and disfigured” when he lost his middle finger of his right hand in March of 1997 while operating a vibrating conveyor that did not have safety guards.

The Joneses maintain that Morin assumed some of the risk of injury by working in the mill, built by Richard Jones in the late 1960s. The 40-foot-long belt/pulley vibrating conveyor, which moved wood slabs to a wood chipper, was bought secondhand by Richard Jones when he outfitted the mill.

Morin is being represented by Thomas Dyhrberg of South Portland, and the Joneses have retained Ted Kurtz of Paris. Both will argue their sides before Maine Superior Court Judge Ellen Gorman.

Court records state that many local people worked at the mill over the years, which made money for the farm by harvesting trees from the Jones property. Other local residents made use of the mill to have trees cut into boards.

The elder Joneses, who have been married 57 years, took title to the 300-acre farm with panoramic White Mountain views from Richard’s mother, Ethel Jones, in 1968. They added Wallace as co-owner of the property in 1980.

The property has been in the Jones family since it was granted to a 7th generation ancestor returning from the Civil War in 1778.

Last October, the farmhouse and barn, located about 1,000 feet from the sawmill, was lost to a fire fanned by high winds. The fire, originating in the barn, was ruled as accidental and likely electrical in origin. There was no insurance on the house, barn, the sawmill or any other structures or livestock on the property.

Wallace Jones became sole owner of the sawmill in 1998. Despite court motions to dismiss claims against the parents, Morin continues to hold all three Joneses liable for his injury, since all three own the land and the father continued to have some involvement in the mill after his son took it over.

The Joneses have all given depositions in the case and have provided Morin with $700 in compensation, according to court documents. At the time of Morin’s injury, however, Wallace Jones was not paying workers compensation insurance for Morin or other sawmill employees.

Morin, who variously gives an address of North Waterford, Locke Mills and Bethel, said he worked as a laborer at the mill for three months, from January to the day of his injury, March 3, 1997.

In his deposition he described the injury as occurring to “the tip of the middle finger of his right hand.”

Kurtz will argue that Wallace Jones was not negligent because of a rule of law that takes into consideration the conduct of a reasonable employer under like circumstances.

“The custom in his community may be a decisive factor in determining whether he acted reasonably,” Kurtz wrote to the court in March.

He quoted a tort case that states: “In determining whether conduct is negligent, the customs of the community or of others under like circumstances, are factors to be taken into account, but are not controlling where a reasonable man would not follow them.”

Kurtz said Wallace Jones was acting “in accordance with the norms of his community when he set up his sawmill.”

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