Opinion ID: 1690692
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suit Under FELA.

Text: Snipes sued the railroad for damages based on four claims of negligence: failure to provide reasonably safe tools and equipment, failure to provide reasonably sufficient help to perform assigned tasks, failure to provide a reasonably safe work environment, and failure to warn of the dangerous condition of the boxcar he was working on. He rested his claims on section 51 of the FELA which provides, in pertinent part, as follows: Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several States ... shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce, or, in case of the death of such employee, to his or her personal representative, ... for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment. 45 U.S.C. § 51. The FELA, which predated the wide passage of workers' compensation statutes in this country, was enacted by Congress to provide the exclusive means of recovery for injured railroad workers and to supersede state law as it related to injuries in interstate commerce. Granger, The Federal Employers' Liability Act, 19 S.Tex.L.J. 349, 353 (1978). The Act does not bar recovery based on common-law concepts of contributory negligence, but instead employs comparative negligence principles. See 45 U.S.C. § 53 (damages diminished by amount of negligence attributable to the employee). The common-law defense of assumption of the risk was rejected. See 45 U.S.C. § 54 (employee shall not be held to assume risks of employment where injury or death results from carrier's negligence). The Act also did away with the fellow servant rule. See 45 U.S.C. § 51 (carrier liable in damages for injury or death resulting from negligence of its officers, agents, or employees). Actions under the FELA may be filed in either state or federal court. See 45 U.S.C. § 56 (concurrent jurisdiction). But federal law governs the definition of negligence and the measure of damages in FELA cases. Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 174, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 1026, 93 L.Ed. 1282, 1295 (1949); Carter v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pac. R.R., 247 Iowa 429, 434, 74 N.W.2d 356, 358 (1956). Recovery under the FELA requires an injured employee to prove that the defendant employer was negligent and that the negligence proximately caused, in whole or in part, the accident. Tennant v. Peoria & Pekin Union Ry., 321 U.S. 29, 32, 64 S.Ct. 409, 411, 88 L.Ed. 520, 524 (1944). To meet this standard, the plaintiff must present probative facts from which the negligence and the causal relation could reasonably be inferred. Id., 321 U.S. at 32, 64 S.Ct. at 411, 88 L.Ed. at 524. The liberality with which the Supreme Court has applied this test is demonstrated by the following quote from Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Co.: Under this statute [FELA] the test of a jury case is simply whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played a part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought. 352 U.S. 500, 506, 77 S.Ct. 443, 448, 1 L.Ed.2d 493, 499 (1957) (emphasis added). This low threshold for recovery was reaffirmed six years later in a case involving a railroad worker who suffered a double leg amputation following an infectious bug bite. Gallick v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R., 372 U.S. 108, 83 S.Ct. 659, 9 L.Ed.2d 618 (1963). Reversing the judgment of a state appeals court, the Court found sufficient proof of a causal link between the insect and a pool of stagnant water in the train yard to raise a jury question on the issue of causation. Id. at 113, 83 S.Ct. at 663, 9 L.Ed.2d at 623. As in the earlier Tennant and Rogers cases, the court ruled that the controlling question on the issue of sufficiency of evidence and causation was whether there was evidence that any employer negligence caused the harm, or, more precisely, enough to justify a jury's determination that employer negligence had played any role in producing the harm. Id. at 116, 83 S.Ct. at 664, 9 L.Ed.2d at 625.