Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/242/462
Timestamp: 2013-12-21 08:40:45
Document Index: 464028073

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8618', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 8619']

ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY et al. v. GEORGE R. WILLIAMS. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
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242 U.S. 462 (37 S.Ct. 128, 61 L.Ed. 437)
ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY et al. v. GEORGE R. WILLIAMS.
Argued: December 6, 1916.
[HTML] Messrs. Charles C. Le Forgee, Blewett Lee, Charles N. Burch, and Robert B. Mayes for plaintiffs in error.
Counsel for the defendants concede that the plaintiff pleaded and proved a case which entitles him to recover under the provisions of the Supplement to the Federal Safety Appliance Act, approved April 14, 1910 36 Stat. at L. 298, chap. 160, Comp. Stat. 1913, § 8618, if § 2 of that act was in effect at the time the accident to the plaintiff occurred on the night of March 15th, 1913; but they claim that this section of the act was not in effect at that time, because it had been suspended until July 1st, 1916, by an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, issued on March 13, 1911, under the authority contained in the proviso of § 3 of the act.
A box car could not properly be used without a secure ladder, and since, by its terms, all cars having ladders must be equipped with secure handholds, the application of this section (if it was not suspended) to the case at bar, the neglect of its requirements, and the liability of the defendants to the plaintiff for the result to him of such neglect, are too clear for discussion. Texas & P. R. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, 60 L. ed. 874, 36 Sup. Ct. Rep. 482.
The congressional purpose in enacting § 2 of the act is very plain. At the time the act was passed railroad carriers had in service many box cars, requiring for their proper use secure ladders and secure handholds or grab irons on their roofs at the tops of such ladders, and the purpose of this section clearly is to convert the general legal duty of exercising ordinary care to provide such safety appliances and to keep them in repair into a statutory, an absolute and imperative, duty, of making them 'secure,' and to enforce this duty by appropriately severe penalties. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 559, 55 L. ed. 582, 31 Sup. Ct. Rep. 612.
It is equally clear that the purpose of the 3d section is to require that the safety appliances 'provided for by § 2 of the act' shall ultimately conform to a standard to be prescribed by the Interstate Commerce Commission; that is, that they shall be standardized, shall be of uniform size and character, and, so far as ladders and handholds are concerned, shall be placed as nearly as possible at a corresponding place on every car so that employees who work always in haste, and often in darkness and storm, may not be betrayed, to their injury or death, when they instinctively reach for the only protection which can avail them when confronted by such a crisis as often arises in their dangerous service. It is for such emergencies that these safety appliances are provided,for service in those instant decisions upon which the safety of life of limb of a man so often depends in this perilous employment,and therefore this law requires that ultimately the location of these ladders and handholds shall be absolutely fixed, so that the employee will know certainly that night or day he will find them in like place and of like size and usefulness on all cars, from whatever line of railway or section of the country they may come. This highly important and humane purpose must not be defeated by finesse of construction such as is pressed upon our attention in the argument of this case.
To change these safety appliances on all the cars in the country from what they were as contemplated by § 2,'secure,' but differing 'in number, dimensions, location and manner of application,'to what they must be when standardized to meet the requirements provided for in § 3, was regarded by Congress as a work so great and so expensive that it wisely committed to the informed discretion of the Interstate Commerce Commission the power and duty of determining the length of time which the carriers should be allowed in which to accomplish it. To give this discretion to the Commission is the function, and the only function, of the proviso of § 3, and the claim that, by construction, power may be found in it to suspend § 2, is too forced and unnatural to be seriously considered.
While the question we have considered has not been presented to this court before in precisely the form in which we have it here, yet § 2 of the act was treated by this court as in full force as of September 4, 1912, in Texas & P. R. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, 60 L. ed. 874, 36 Sup. Ct. Rep. 482, and the supreme court of the state of Minnesota in Coleman v. Illinois C. R. Co. 132 Minn. 22, 155 N. W. 763, and the supreme court of Iowa in Cook v. Union P. R. Co. Iowa, , 158 N. W. 521, while arriving at their conclusions by somewhat different analyses of the sections of the Act of April 14, 1910, have given to them precisely the meaning and effect which we are giving to them in this decision. It results that the judgment of the Supreme Court of Mississippi is affirmed.
Comp. St. 1913, § 8619.