Case Title: Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Trimiew

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 1997-01-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  All the Justices 
 
NORFOLK SOUTHERN  
RAILWAY COMPANY 
 
OPINION BY JUSTICE A. CHRISTIAN COMPTON 
v.  Record No. 960533                 January 10, 1997 
 
CLINTON TRIMIEW 
 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF RICHMOND 
 
Randall G. Johnson, Judge 
 
 
On August 20, 1993, appellee Clinton Trimiew, the plaintiff 
below, was injured while working for appellant Norfolk Southern 
Railway Company, the defendant below, near Burkeville in Nottoway 
County.  The plaintiff brought this action against defendant 
under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 45 U.S.C. § 51 
et seq., to recover damages for his injuries. 
 
The plaintiff alleged that he was injured during "his 
attempt to alight and exit from the passenger side cab of a high 
rail vehicle which ran along the railroad track."  He asserted 
that "[u]pon alighting from the vehicle, he suddenly slipped on 
excessively high and ungroomed ballast rock which lined the track 
area just outside his vehicle."  He alleged the defendant 
negligently failed to provide him a safe place to work, 
negligently "failed to inspect, find, and warn Plaintiff of a 
dangerous condition," and violated its "own standards as to the 
proper grooming and placement of ballast rock along the railroad 
line prior to Plaintiff's accident."   
 
In a grounds of defense, the defendant denied the 
allegations of primary negligence, alleged the plaintiff's 
injuries were caused solely by his own negligence, and asserted 
the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence.   
 
 
 
 
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The case was submitted to a jury during a two-day trial in 
December 1995 upon the issues of primary and contributory 
negligence, proximate cause, and damages.  The defendant did not 
move to strike the plaintiff's evidence either at the conclusion 
of the plaintiff's case-in-chief or at the close of all the 
evidence.  The jury found in favor of the plaintiff and fixed the 
damages at $500,000.   
 
Following announcement of the verdict, the defendant moved 
the court to set the verdict aside upon the ground that the 
plaintiff had failed to prove the defendant was negligent.  See 
Gabbard v. Knight, 202 Va. 40, 43, 116 S.E.2d 73, 75 (1960) (in 
testing sufficiency of evidence, defendant has option of making a 
motion to strike the plaintiff's evidence or awaiting the jury's 
verdict). 
 
The trial court denied the motion and entered judgment on 
the verdict.  We awarded the defendant this appeal, limited to 
consideration of whether the trial court erred in denying 
defendant's motion to set aside the verdict and in ruling the 
evidence was sufficient to present a jury issue upon the question 
of defendant's negligence. 
 
Recently, we summarized the settled principles applicable to 
cases of this type.  We apply federal decisional law, because 
whether negligence has been established for purposes of the FELA 
is a federal question.  Drawing on federal law, we have noted 
that a plaintiff's proof must justify with reason the conclusion 
 
 
 
 
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that an employer's negligence played any part, even the 
slightest, in producing the injury for which damages are sought. 
 Norfolk and W. Ry. Co. v. Johnson, 251 Va. 37, 43, 465 S.E.2d 
800, 805 (1996).  Reasonable foreseeability of harm is an 
essential ingredient of FELA negligence.  Id. at 43-44, 465 
S.E.2d at 805.  Ordinarily, the issue of FELA negligence is a 
question of fact to be decided by the jury.  Norfolk and W. Ry. 
Co. v. Hodges, 248 Va. 254, 260, 448 S.E.2d 592, 595 (1994).  
However, in the rare case when fair-minded persons cannot differ 
on whether the employer was at fault and whether that fault 
played any part in the employee's injury, the question becomes 
one for the court.  Stover v. Norfolk and W. Ry. Co., 249 Va. 
192, 199, 455 S.E.2d 238, 242, cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 116 
S.Ct. 186 (1995). 
 
Under the FELA, an employer has a nondelegable, continuing 
duty to exercise reasonable care in furnishing its employees a 
safe place to work.  Johnson, 251 Va. at 44, 465 S.E.2d at 805.  
The employer must conduct proper inspections to discover dangers 
in places where employees are required to work, and must take 
reasonable precautions for the employees' safety after 
determining the existence of such dangers.  Id.  But even under 
the FELA, an employee still must establish that the employer was 
guilty of some act of negligence in order to recover.  Norfolk 
and W. Ry. Co. v. Hughes, 247 Va. 113, 116, 439 S.E.2d 411, 413, 
cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 2136 (1994). 
 
 
 
 
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Examining the facts of this case against the background of 
the foregoing principles, we hold the evidence was insufficient 
as a matter of law to raise a jury issue upon the question of 
defendant's negligence. 
 
Rules of appellate procedure require us to consider the 
facts, some of which are disputed, in the light most favorable to 
the plaintiff, who is here armed with a jury verdict confirmed by 
the trial judge.  During daylight hours in August 1993, the 
plaintiff was riding in the passenger seat of the cab of a "high 
rail" vehicle operated by Robert Forsythe on defendant's track.  
They were inspecting the track near Burkeville.  The plaintiff, 
employed by defendant for 20 years, was a track laborer.  
Forsythe was one of defendant's assistant track supervisors.  A 
high rail vehicle is "just a regular truck" that has the 
capability of being operated on a highway or a railroad track.   
 
Forsythe stopped the vehicle to cut bushes near the track. 
He alighted from the vehicle's left side and the plaintiff, after 
putting on his hard hat and gloves, began to alight from the 
right side, apparently to assist Forsythe in clearing the bushes. 
   
According to the plaintiff, the ground where he was to step 
from the vehicle "looked safe to get out."  Holding to the 
vehicle for support, the plaintiff then stepped on ballast rock 
lying along the track.  He testified that as he stepped down, the 
"ballast just went from under me, like, if you were to step on a 
pile of marbles."  The plaintiff "landed down" in an adjacent 
 
 
 
 
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ditch and felt "something pop" in his back.  
 
Ballast, in this context, is stone laid on the roadbed of a 
railroad track for the purpose of stabilizing the track and 
facilitating drainage.  According to defendant's written standard 
procedures on the use of ballast, its purpose is "to provide 
adequate drainage and afford a means of maintaining proper cross 
level, surface, and alignment for the track under load."  The 
stone is commonly known as "2 inch ballast" or "3/4 inch 
ballast."   
 
Ballast is unloaded from the sides of a slowly moving, 
multi-car train.  A "berm" of ballast is laid beside the track 
and outboard of the "head" of cross-ties supporting the track. 
After laying, the berm generally is eight to twelve inches above 
the top of the rail.  When ballast is piled to this level, "it 
makes for a difficult walking surface."  These mounds of ballast 
are smoothed and "groomed" by a machine called a "ballast 
regulator."  When groomed, the ballast supporting a level track 
is even with the level of the cross-tie for six inches and then 
slopes downward away from the cross-tie.   
 
The evidence showed that railroads periodically must replace 
old cross-ties and resurface sections of track.  This is called a 
"timbering and surfacing" (T & S) operation.  Before a scheduled 
T & S operation, ballast that will be used in the project is 
unloaded.  The piles of rock are left in an ungroomed condition 
until the old ties are replaced during the T & S operation, after 
 
 
 
 
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which the ballast is groomed to the prescribed profile.   
 
In the present case, ballast was unloaded in March 1993 
along a stretch of track that included the site of the 
plaintiff's fall, which occurred about five months later.  The 
dumping of the rock was described as "unusual" because it was 
frozen and did not flow smoothly from the ballast train.  The 
ballast came out "in chunks" and piled up along the rails,  
leaving "big piles here, big piles there," according to one 
witness.   
 
The unloading was in advance of a T & S operation scheduled 
for the summer of 1993.  Because of "budget reasons," the T & S 
operation was postponed until "the next year, or possibly the 
year after that."  Thus, the ballast remained as it was dumped 
along the track up to the time of plaintiff's fall. 
 
The plaintiff's evidence showed that an operational ballast 
regulator owned by defendant was stored on a railroad sidetrack 
about three miles away from the site of this accident and that 
employees of defendant qualified to operate the machine were 
available.  Two witnesses who had operated a ballast regulator in 
the past testified that it would take four to five hours to 
"smooth out" the approximately five or six miles of ballast that 
had been dumped in March.  Additionally, the plaintiff's evidence 
showed that a timbering and surfacing "gang" was "usually" 
scheduled within one to three months of dumping to "come through 
to smooth the ballast."  
 
 
 
 
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The plaintiff participated in the March unloading project 
and had passed the area where he fell on work days prior to the 
day of the accident.  He testified he knew "ballast was in that 
general area," but that he "had never stopped" there before the 
day he fell.   
 
On appeal, the plaintiff contends the trial court correctly 
refused to set the verdict aside because the plaintiff "proved 
multiple theories of negligence."  Initially, the plaintiff 
argues that his immediate supervisor, Forsythe, "failed to warn 
him that there were unusually high mounds of ballast rock in the 
area where the supervisor chose to stop the high rail vehicle."  
Continuing, he says that even though he participated in the March 
ballast dumping operation, "it should be remembered that he 
worked along 105 miles of track, and that he often worked in the 
area of crossings or rail switches," areas where the evidence 
showed "the ballast train had not dumped unusually high mounds of 
ballast."  He notes that because assumption of risk has been 
abolished under the FELA, 45 U.S.C. § 54, "the railroad cannot be 
exonerated from liability simply because Trimiew participated in 
dumping the stone five months earlier."   
 
In addition, the plaintiff argues that because defendant 
knew the T & S gang would not come through Burkeville at all 
during 1993 and because it was aware of the danger of the 
unusually high mounds, it was incumbent upon defendant to groom 
the ballast promptly.  According to the plaintiff, "the 
 
 
 
 
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preventive measure to correct the dangerous condition was so 
simple, a four or five hour work assignment, . . . there was 
plainly a basis for the jury to determine that the railroad was 
negligent in failing to assign a worker to operate this ballast 
regulator to smooth the ballast mounds."  
 
Also, the plaintiff contends defendant should have trained 
him "about dismounting from a high rail vehicle into unusually 
high mounds of loose ballast."  The evidence showed that, prior 
to plaintiff's fall, defendant maintained no written safety rule 
or informed the plaintiff about "how a worker's arms and legs are 
to be positioned prior to exiting from the cab of a high rail 
vehicle."  
 
We reject each of the plaintiff's "multiple theories of 
negligence."  The FELA "does not make the railroad an absolute 
insurer against personal injury damages suffered by its 
employees."  Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 336 U.S. 53, 61 (1949).  And, 
under the FELA, the weight of the evidence must exceed a 
scintilla before the case properly may be left to the jury's 
discretion.  Stover, 249 Va. at 200, 455 S.E.2d at 243 (citing 
Brady v. Southern Ry. Co., 320 U.S. 476, 479 (1943)).  If, 
without weighing the credibility of the witnesses, the evidence 
supports "but one reasonable conclusion as to the verdict," the 
court should decide the matter, thus saving the result "from the 
mischance of speculation over legally unfounded claims."  Stover, 
249 Va. at 200, 455 S.E.2d at 243 (quoting Brady, 320 U.S. at 
 
 
 
 
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479-80) (internal quotations omitted). 
 
In the present case, the record is devoid of proof, lay or 
expert, that there was anything improper in the manner the 
ungroomed ballast was situated along the track.  In his argument, 
the plaintiff dwells on the erroneous conclusions that the 
ungroomed ballast was "excessively high" and "dangerous."  All 
the evidence was to the contrary; the ballast where plaintiff 
fell was at the normal height for ungroomed ballast.  The berm is 
generally eight to twelve inches above the top of the rail on 
each side of the track, and that was the condition, according to 
all the evidence, that existed at the point of plaintiff's 
accident.   
 
There was no proof that the plaintiff fell on any of the 
previously frozen "chunks" or lumps of stone discharged during 
the March unloading.  Indeed, the plaintiff submitted as evidence 
photographs he had taken of the "exact area" of his fall, and 
these photos do not show ballast lying in "chunks" or lumps; they 
merely show a smooth, constant mound of ballast piled along the 
rails.   
 
Workers like this plaintiff were fully aware of the normal 
condition of ungroomed ballast from long railroad experience and 
from participating in unloading the very ballast upon which the 
plaintiff fell; they knew that ungroomed ballast was "difficult" 
to walk upon.  Thus, given these facts, there was no basis for 
the defendant to foresee that the ballast, laid in routine 
 
 
 
 
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fashion for miles along track in open country, posed an 
unreasonable danger to employees such as this plaintiff. 
 
Because the berm of ballast lay in a normal condition, the 
length of time the rock remained ungroomed becomes irrelevant 
upon the question of any alleged negligence charged to the 
railroad for failing to timely groom the rock with a ballast 
regulator.  The ungroomed ballast where plaintiff fell, according 
to the uncontradicted evidence, was in the same condition and 
degree of stability the day after it was spread as it was five 
months later on the day of the accident.  As the defendant 
argues, under the plaintiff's theory the railroad should have 
scheduled a special operation to groom the ballast when the 
original T & S operation was postponed, and then repeated the 
entire ballast unloading process when the T & S operation was 
rescheduled.  To find that the railroad owes a duty to its 
employees under these circumstances to regulate ungroomed 
ballast, a known condition, in a specified period of time is to 
reach the unreasonable conclusion that the railroad may never 
spread ballast in anticipation of a T & S operation for fear of 
being found liable for an employee's injuries sustained during a 
perfectly routine maintenance project. 
 
There are a number of reported cases decided in other 
jurisdictions under the FELA involving falls by railroad workers 
on ballast, none of which is persuasive because they are 
factually inapposite to this case.  See generally, e.g., Atl. 
 
 
 
 
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Coast Line R.R. Co. v. Gunter, 229 F.2d 842 (5th Cir. 1956); 
Seaboard Air Line R.R. Co. v. Gentry, 46 So.2d 485 (Fla. 1950); 
Hahn v. Norfolk and W. Ry. Co., 375 N.E.2d 914 (Ill. App. 1978); 
Harp v. Illinois Cent. Gulf R.R. Co., 370 N.E.2d 826 (Ill. App. 
1977). 
 
Finally, the plaintiff complains on appeal of the failure of 
the defendant to instruct him or provide written rules about the 
safe method of dismounting a high rail vehicle.  The plaintiff 
did not present this theory of negligence at trial; there was no 
such allegation in the motion for judgment and there was no 
instruction that would have allowed the jury to make a finding 
against the defendant on this subject.  As a matter of fact, 
plaintiff's failure to properly dismount the vehicle was an issue 
raised by the defendant and presumably was considered by the jury 
on the contributory negligence question.  Thus, we shall not 
discuss the issue further.   
 
Accordingly, we hold that the trial court erred in denying 
the defendant's motion to set the verdict aside.  Thus, we will 
reverse the judgment for the plaintiff and enter final judgment 
here in favor of the defendant. 
 
Reversed and final judgment.