Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01544/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01544-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
CSX Transportation, Inc.
Appellee
Chance T. Kelham
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16‐1544

CHANCE T. KELHAM,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC.,

Defendant‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.

No. 2:12‐cv‐00316 — Andrew P. Rodovich, Magistrate Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 — DECIDED OCTOBER 27, 2016

____________________

Before BAUER, POSNER, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, Chance Kelham, a

railroad engineer, sued the railroad that employed him, ac‐

cusing it of having negligently caused him to be injured, for

which he seeks compensation under the Federal Employers’

Liability Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 51 et seq. The case was tried to a

jury, which exonerated the railroad, precipitating this ap‐

peal.

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6
2 No. 16‐1544

On the day of the accident that Kelham claims caused his

injury, he was driving a mile‐long freight train comprised of

two locomotives and 69 empty cars. Ordered to halt the train

briefly on a parallel track to enable a train with a higher pri‐

ority to pass it, Kelham duly halted his train. Unfortunately

another train, which was also supposed to wait on the paral‐

lel track, failed to stop at a red stop signal and collided with

Kelham’s train from behind. Because of the length of his

train and the weight of its locomotive (212 tons), the collision

caused the locomotive to lurch forward slightly. A mechani‐

cal engineer testifying for the railroad compared what a for‐

ward‐facing video camera attached to the front of Kelham’s

locomotive showed to what was shown by a video camera

attached to another locomotive of the same make and model.

That locomotive was placed in the same location on the

tracks as the locomotive of Kelham’s train when it had be‐

gun its lurch, and was then moved slowly forward so that

the video from its camera could be compared with the video

from the camera attached to the front of Kelham’s locomo‐

tive. The comparison indicated that the lurch forward could

not have exceeded seven or eight inches, or lasted more than

a third of a second—numbers that the engineer testified in‐

dicated that the train had accelerated as a result of the colli‐

sion at an average of 13.5 feet per second squared.

Kelham complains that the engineer compared the two

videos by eye rather than by mathematical calculations,

didn’t measure the height of the camera on the comparison

locomotive, and didn’t account for the “bounce and shud‐

der” movement of the train. But the trial judge correctly

ruled that these objections could be adequately explored on

cross‐examination.

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6
No. 16‐1544 3

Kelham’s claim that the locomotive “bounced” vertically

is implausible given the locomotive’s weight and the slight‐

ness of the lurch, and while he points to testimony from

Knipp, the other conductor in the cab at the time of the acci‐

dent, that the locomotive “bounced ... back and forth,” that

isn’t the same as bouncing up and down. Kelham also claims

that the “bounce and shudder” are visible in the video of the

accident, but CSX’s expert, who watched the video, disa‐

greed, and the jurors were shown the video at trial and

could decide for themselves. The jury rejected Kelham’s

challenges to the railroad’s testimony, awarding judgment to

the railroad.

The railroad concedes that the accident was caused by

the negligence of its employees—the crew of the second

train who ran the red light; the issue is whether the lurch re‐

sulting from the impact of the second train when it collided

with Kelham’s train caused the injuries of which he com‐

plains. He testified that when the lurch occurred he’d just

risen from his seat in the locomotive cab and begun to walk

down the three stairs to the locomotive’s bathroom. The

stairwell faced forward, so someone walking down the stairs

would be facing the front of the train. Kelham claims that as

he began to walk down, the lurch from the impact caused

him to fall forward—almost indeed to somersault—down

the stairs, causing a serious injury to his back which aggra‐

vated a condition that he had called “spondylitic spondylo‐

listhesis”—the forward slippage of a vertebra—which had

been asymptomatic before the accident but afterward re‐

quired surgery.

A biomechanical engineer testified for the railroad that

the forward lurch of the locomotive should have pushed

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6
4 No. 16‐1544

Kelham backward rather than forward, since he was facing

the front of the train at the time of the accident. If you’re sit‐

ting in the back seat of a taxi stopped for a traffic light, then

when the light changes and the cab surges ahead you’ll feel

yourself pushed against the back of your seat, while if the

taxi was moving and then slowed or stopped you would feel

yourself pushed forward, toward the divider between the

front and rear seats. The engineer further testified that if the

lurch had pushed Kelham backward without causing him to

hit the back wall of the locomotive cab, it would have been

too weak to injure him. In addition the train conductor sit‐

ting next to Kelham in the locomotive cab did not see him

fall when the locomotive lurched. And for days after the ac‐

cident he told no one that he’d fallen, even though he spent a

good deal of that time with coworkers, supervisors, and

medical personnel. Nor had he any bruises or any other visi‐

ble injuries from the fall, even though he testified that at the

end of the somersault his back and neck were against a

bulkhead door and his feet were over his head. He argued

that the biomechanical engineer had ignored the “bounce

and shudder” and assumed he’d been positioned upright at

the time of the accident, while he claims that he was learning

forward, that the studies cited by the engineer of how people

who are standing on a platform react when the platform

moves don’t apply to someone who is walking down stairs,

as Kelham claims he was, and that the engineer did not cite

studies on the aggravation of spondylitic spondylolisthesis

specifically—but again the trial judge correctly ruled that

Kelham’s objections could be explored on cross‐examination,

and the jury didn’t have to believe him.

There is no question that Kelham has serious back pain,

but the railroad presented evidence that the pain preexisted

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6
No. 16‐1544 5

the forward lurch of his train. Indeed he’d begun complain‐

ing of back pain in 2007, four and a half years before the col‐

lision, and the pain had worsened over time. An MRI on Oc‐

tober 5, 2009 revealed a herniated disc and a bulging disc,

along with the spondylitic spondylolisthesis. On the recom‐

mendation of an orthopedic surgeon he was given a “nerve

root block” (a strong anesthetic) a week later and in the fol‐

lowing months received epidural steroid injections from a

pain management specialist. A few weeks after the nerve

root block he complained of pain and obtained prescriptions

for morphine and Vicodin—opioid pain medications—and

had continued to receive and fill prescriptions for the drugs

up until the time of the accident, including five times in the

five months immediately preceding it.

His back pain persisted after the accident, eventually

leading him to have surgery; we say “persisted” because by

his own admission it was similar to the pain that he had ex‐

perienced and taken opioids to alleviate before the accident.

Indeed he told medical staff—repeatedly—that he was seek‐

ing treatment for symptoms that he’d been experiencing for

years. And indeed the surgery he had was for the same back

pain for which he’d taken opioids before the accident. His

post‐accident surgeon conceded in a deposition that “sur‐

gery was an option for [Kelham]” before the accident, and

that he would defer to CSX’s expert on whether the lurch

could have caused Kelham’s post‐accident symptoms. And

Kelham’s pre‐accident doctor conceded in a deposition that

the spondylitic spondylolisthesis, which Kelham claims be‐

came symptomatic only after the accident, could have been

responsible for some of his pre‐accident symptoms. Indeed it

would be a miracle had those symptoms vanished right be‐

fore the lurch (they couldn’t have vanished a significant time

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6
6 No. 16‐1544

before it as otherwise he would have stopped taking the

opioids, which are dangerous medicines), only to recur—the

identical symptoms—as a consequence of the lurch. And the

trial judge correctly rejected Kelham’s objections to admit‐

ting the evidence about his history of back problems and the

unfavorable statements from the depositions of his pre‐ and

post‐accident doctors.

After the surgery he was advised to undergo physical

therapy, which his medical records indicate that he did but

only intermittently, and though he has only modest func‐

tional limitations, which would not prevent him from work‐

ing in some capacity for a railroad, he has declined to seek

reemployment in the railroad industry. It was not unreason‐

able for a jury to find that Kelham had fabricated the claim

that he was injured by the lurch, as unless the railroad

bought his story it would not be required by the Federal

Employers’ Liability Act to compensate Kelham for the cost

of the surgery that he needed to repair the consequences of

pre‐accident ailments for which the railroad was not respon‐

sible. The jury was entitled to conclude that the negligence

of the railroad that resulted in the collision and ensuing

lurch had no causal relation to his injuries—that, to repeat,

the injuries were the product of ailments that preceded the

lurch.    

AFFIRMED

Case: 16-1544 Document: 32 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 6