Opinion ID: 766741
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Standard as Applied to this Case

Text: 18 Under the applicable standards in this Circuit, the plaintiff's case should have been allowed to go to the jury. First, based on the plaintiff's testimony alone, there was sufficient evidence of negligence to warrant sending the case to the jury. 19 There is no dispute that the LIRR owed Williams a duty to provide a safe working environment. In determining whether there was a question for the jury as to breach of this duty, the District Court appeared dissatisfied that there was no direct evidence of negligence. The court focused on the plaintiff's attempt to show, through Williams's direct examination, that Sboto should have warned Williams not to use the ties; as the District Court pointed out, however, Sboto was not Williams's superior, nor was there any evidence that Sboto saw Williams attempt to climb on the ties. Because the District Court determined that [t]hat is all of the testimony in the record with respect to negligence, it granted the defendant's motion. 20 It is well-established, however, that under FELA the jury's power to draw inferences is greater than in common-law actions. Burns v. Penn Cent. Co., 519 F.2d 512, 514 (2d Cir. 1975). Viewing the plaintiff's testimony in a light most favorable to him, as we must, a juror could draw the following inferences: first, the LIRR knew that the B&B mechanics had to get up and down from the fifty-inch high permanent platform in order to perform their job, and, given the frequency with which Williams testified he used the ties as steps, one could infer the LIRR knew or should have known that this was a practice among B&B workers; second, the ties were placed by the LIRR in such a way as to suggest their use as steps; third, the ties were slippery, especially when wet; fourth, at least in the plaintiff's view, there was no other reasonable means of getting back to the permanent platform. Thus, the inference could be drawn that the LIRR did not provide the plaintiff with a safe means of performing a necessary task of his employment and, in fact, provided an inherently unsafe alternative that it knew or should have known would be utilized in the manner Williams attempted when he injured himself. 21 The fact that Williams was perhaps not as diligent as he should have been in exploring safer alternatives should not prohibit a finding of negligence on the LIRR's part. Rather, this fact might weigh into the jury's consideration of whether Williams was contributorily negligent. Though the evidence of the LIRR's negligence is slight, drawing the above inferences it cannot be said, based even on the evidence developed during the plaintiff's case-in-chief, that there is absolutely no reasonable basis for a jury to find for the plaintiff. Syverson, 19 F.3d at 828. 22 Second, there was further support for the plaintiff's claim of negligence in his cross examination of the defendant's witnesses. The LIRR argues that we should not consider any evidence revealed during the defendant's case, because it was not part of the plaintiff's case-in- chief and, therefore, does not aid Williams in satisfying his burden of proof. The District Court appears to have relied solely on the plaintiff's case-in-chief in deciding to dismiss the case (During the lunch hour, this Court has had an opportunity to examine the testimony of the plaintiff . . . both direct, cross, redirect, and recross.). 23 The District Court should not have limited itself to the evidence presented during the plaintiff's case-in-chief once it denied the motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of the plaintiff's case. Rather, the District Court should have considered all of the evidence in the record. See Dumac Forestry Servs., Inc. v. International Bhd. of Elec. Workers, No. 83-CV- 1627, 1988 WL 985, at  (N.D.N.Y. Jan. 6, 1988) (noting that the court must consider all of the evidence presented at trial, including that elicited on cross examination, because the defendants waived their initial motion for judgment as a matter of law by proceeding after the district court's reservation on the motion) (citing A & N Club v. Great Am. Ins. Co., 404 F.2d 100, 103-04 (6th Cir. 1968)); cf. Silva v. Worden, 130 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 1997) (stating that the trial court's reservation on a motion for judgment as a matter of law was an effective denial of the motion). In any event, we must on appeal consider all of the evidence properly in the record at the time that the case was dismissed. See Silva, 130 F.3d at 30 (deciding that the Court of Appeals must . . . view all of the evidence presented at trial where the defendants chose to proceed with their case after the district court reserved on the motion); Electro Source, Inc. v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 95 F.3d 837, 838 (9th Cir. 1996) (holding that Court of Appeals must view the evidence as a whole and draw all possible inferences in favor of the non-moving party in reviewing a district court's grant of judgment as a matter of law at the end of trial but before the case was submitted to the jury) (internal quotation marks omitted). 24 On cross examination of the LIRR's witnesses, the plaintiff established facts that would allow the jury to draw the following inferences in further support of his claim of negligence: first, the ladder that existed was approximately 300 feet away and had to be reached by walking along an electrically charged track and track ties with the same slippery coating, not a reasonable alternative, especially when it was pouring rain; second, the LIRR chains ladders to temporary platforms at other locations; and, finally, there were portable ladders available for the LIRR to distribute to the station where Williams was working. These facts are especially important in a negligence case where, [i]n determining whether a course of conduct is reasonable, the probability and gravity of injury must be balanced against the ease of taking effective preventive measures. Eaton, 398 F.2d at 742. 25 In Eaton a case strikingly similar to this one we specifically stated that in evaluating the defendant's conduct the jury could take into consideration the ease and presumably small expense of installing a safe means of egress from a pit where railroad car repair men worked. Id. at 741-42 (holding that there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's finding of liability against the LIRR under FELA). 26 In sum, based on the facts revealed during the plaintiff's case-in-chief, and as further developed during the defendant's case, a jury determination was warranted.