ELEVATOR - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

ELEVATORAuthored

The Law Mind • 857 words

Definition

An elevator is a mechanical apparatus — typically a platform, car, cab, or cage propelled vertically within a hoistway, shaft, or hatchway by cables, hydraulic pressure, or electricity — used to convey persons or freight between floors or levels of a building. In legal contexts, the term carries two related but distinct meanings:

1. Mechanical lift. The hoisting device itself, including the cab, the hoistway, the cables, and the operating machinery. This is the dominant legal meaning in premises liability, personal injury, and building code law.

2. Grain elevator or storage elevator. A warehouse or building equipped with mechanical hoisting apparatus for receiving, storing, and discharging grain. This meaning appears prominently in agricultural law, commodity storage regulation, and early railroad and commerce jurisprudence.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To move in an elevator (verb form); by extension, the noun form refers to the mechanical lift itself.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A mechanical contrivance — endless belt, chain, or hoisting cage — for lifting grain to storage lofts or conveying persons and goods between levels of a building. Called a "lift" in England.

The common meaning and the legal meaning are largely continuous, but the legal context sharpens liability-relevant details the ordinary definition ignores: ownership, maintenance obligations, inspection requirements, and the distinction between common carriers and private operators. A researcher relying on the lay definition will miss the regulatory and duty-of-care structure that legal sources attach to the term.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Passenger elevator. A car or cage designed to transport persons. Gives rise to the most heavily litigated duty-of-care questions; operators may be treated as common carriers in some jurisdictions.

Freight elevator. Designed primarily for goods; occupancy by persons is typically restricted or governed by separate safety standards.

Grain elevator. A storage and hoisting facility for grain. A functionally separate legal category governed by warehouse and commodity storage law, warehousing licenses, and agricultural regulation rather than building codes.

Mine hoist or cage. The vertical conveyance in mining operations. Governed by distinct statutory regimes relating to mine safety.

Why It Matters in Research

The dual meaning is the principal research trap. Sources indexed under "elevator" in agricultural, railroad, and commerce law almost certainly refer to grain storage facilities, not mechanical lifts. Pre-twentieth-century legal materials — including much of the corpus of state railroad commission decisions and grain warehouse legislation — use "elevator" almost exclusively in the grain-storage sense. A researcher looking for premises liability doctrine on mechanical lifts must not assume early "elevator" cases address the same subject.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law cross-references elevator directly to NEGLIGENCE, signaling that by the time of that compilation, the dominant legal question for mechanical elevators was duty of care and liability for injury — not definitional content. This is useful navigational intelligence: look upstream from the definition to the negligence doctrine for substantive law.

In the Law Mind corpus, elevator negligence cases often appear alongside carrier liability materials, because courts in some jurisdictions applied common carrier standards (demanding the highest degree of care) to passenger elevators operated in hotels, department stores, and office buildings. Other courts applied ordinary premises liability standards. The distinction matters enormously for how cases are argued and how historical opinions frame the duty analysis.

Building codes, fire codes, and mechanical safety statutes create a dense regulatory overlay on elevator law that is largely absent from the historical dictionaries. Researchers working in twentieth-century materials should expect cross-references to specific inspection and licensing regimes that vary by state and municipality.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's definition is the most complete of the historical sources, tracking both meanings (mechanical lift and grain warehouse) and providing the operational detail — platform, car, cab, cage, propelled vertically by cables, hydraulic pressure, or electricity — that grounds the legal analysis of what counts as an elevator for purposes of a given statute or duty. The reference to Century Dictionary signals that Bouvier is drawing on general technical usage rather than a settled legal definition, which is honest: elevator law is largely statutory and case-built, not defined by common law tradition.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law essentially declines to define the term substantively, redirecting the reader to NEGLIGENCE. This is an editorial choice worth noting: by Anderson's time, the definition itself was uncontested; what mattered legally was how negligence doctrine applied to elevator owners, operators, manufacturers, and inspectors.

Neither historical source addresses the regulatory and licensing frameworks that came to dominate elevator law in the twentieth century, nor do they capture the distinction between private and public-access elevators that affects duty analysis. Researchers should treat both entries as definitional starting points only.

Jurisdictional Note

Common carrier status for passenger elevators is not uniform. Some states and courts applied heightened common carrier duties to commercial passenger elevators; others applied ordinary negligence or premises liability standards. Grain elevators are subject to state warehousing and licensing law that varies significantly, particularly in agricultural states where elevator operators historically functioned as regulated utilities.

ELEVATORmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

A building containing one or more mechanical elevators, especí- ally a warehouse for the storage of grain; a hoisting apparatus; a lift; a car or cage for lifting and lowering passengers or freight in a hoistway. Cent. Dict. An elevator is a platform, car, cab, or cage, propelled vertically in a hoistway, hatchway, or shaft, by cables, moved gen- erally by either hydraulic pressure, elec- tricity, steam, or compressed air. In its upward and downward course it is usually conducted by a motorman on board, who stops and starts it at will. In comparatively recent years the elevator has come into gen- eral use in the factory, mill, warehouse, mercantile and office building, and apart- ment house. It may be constructed and used for the carriage of passengers, or freight, or both. 10 A. & E. Ency. 2nd ed., 945. A passenger elevator is not a device dan- gerous, to life, per se; 90 Wis. 497. A landlord who runs an elevator for the use of his tenants and their visitors thereby becomes a common carrier; 41 Minn. 207; and is charged with the highest degree of care which human foresight can suggest, both as to the machinery and the conduct of his servants; 54 Fed. Rep. 637; 80 Cal. 595. A carrier of passengers by elevator is not an insurer, but is required to exercise the highest degree of care; 62 Fed. Rep. 139; 114 N. Y. 812; 159 Mass. 26. In con- structing an elevator the utmost care must be exercised; 41 Minn. 209; competent workmen must be employed and suitable material used; 20 Col. 292. In case of a casualty, it is not enough to show that the elevator is one of a kind in ordinary use; 50 Mo. 390; 136 III. 170. But the absence of safety appliances is said not to be con- clusive evidence of negligence: 142 Mass. 83. An elevator is not supposed to be a place of danger, to be approached with great caution; but when the door is opened a passenger may enter it without stopping to make a special examination; 114 N. Y. 318. One who habitually rides on a freight elevator, in contravention of a posted no- tice, does so at his own risk; 156 Mass. 511. See as to injury to passengers, 25 L. R. A. 33, as to freight id. 34. The business of elevating grain is a busi- ness charged with a public interest, and those who carry it on occupy a relation to the community analogous to that of a com- mon carrier, and may be controlled by pub- lic legislation for the common good; Munn. v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113; 143 U. S. 517. For liability of owners of buildings for accidents at elevator shafts, see 9 Lawy. Rep. Ann. 640, n. See, generally, Webb, Elevators; L. R. 12 Q. B. Div. 30. Operators of Elevators. The proprietor or operator of an elevator is a carrier. Id.; 62 Fed. Rep. 139, et al. A carrier by elevator of passengers, is not an insurer, but is required to exercise the highest degree of care in everything calculated to insure the safety of his passengers. There is no distine- tion in law between the duties and liabilities of a carrier by elevator and one by railroad. Id.

ELEVATORcrossref

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

See NEGLIGENCE.

ELEVATORn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

One who, or that which, raises or lifts up anything; as: A mechanical contrivance, usually an endless belt or chain with a series of scoops or buckets, for transferring grain to an upper loft for storage. A cage or platform and the hoisting machinery in a hotel, warehouse, mine, etc., for conveying persons, goods, etc., to or from different floors or levels; -- called in England a lift; the cage or platform itself. A building for elevating, storing, and discharging, grain.

elevatorverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

To move in an elevator.

elevatornoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Anything that raises or uplifts. | A permanent construction with a built-in platform or cab that can be raised and lowered, used to transport people and goods, as between different floors of a building. | A silo used for storing wheat, corn or other grain (grain elevator). | A control surface of an aircraft responsible for controlling the pitching motion of the machine. | A dental instrument used to pry up ("elevate") teeth in difficult extractions, or depressed portions of bone. | Any muscle that serves to raise a part of the body, such as the leg or the eye. | A type of shoe having an insert lift to make the wearer appear taller.

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