Opinion ID: 749336
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Res Ipsa Loquitur Jury Instruction

Text: 16 Ms. Robinson's claim is based upon FELA, a federal statute providing that a railroad is liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce ... 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. 45 U.S.C. § 51. The Supreme Court has construed liberally this statute in order to promote the remedial goal of allowing recovery for injuries and deaths of railroad workers, in recognition of the physical dangers of such work. See Consolidated Rail Corp. v. Gottshall, 512 U.S. 532, 543, 114 S.Ct. 2396, 2404, 129 L.Ed.2d 427 (1994). Nevertheless, the Court has made clear that the statute does not turn a railroad into the workers' insurer.  'The basis of [the employer's] liability is his negligence, not the fact that injuries occur.'  Id. (quoting Ellis v. Union Pac. R. Co., 329 U.S. 649, 653, 67 S.Ct. 598, 600, 91 L.Ed. 572 (1947)). 17 What constitutes negligence for the statute's purposes is a federal question, not varying in accordance with the differing conceptions of negligence applicable under state and local laws for other purposes. Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 174, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 1027, 93 L.Ed. 1282 (1949). In Urie, the Court also recognized that FELA is founded on common-law concepts of negligence and injury, subject to such qualifications as Congress has imported into those terms. Id. at 182, 69 S.Ct. at 1030-31. In Gottshall the Court reiterated that principle. See 512 U.S. at 543, 114 S.Ct. at 2404. In conformity with Urie and Gottshall, we have declared that it is well settled that we treat negligence claims under FELA as federal questions. See Gillman v. Burlington N. R.R. Co., 878 F.2d 1020, 1022 (7th Cir.1989). 3 18 The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur (a Latin phrase meaning the matter speaks for itself) is applicable in FELA cases and, in appropriate circumstances, permits an inference of negligence on the part of the railroad for railroad-related injuries. The Supreme Court set forth the prerequisites for invoking a res ipsa loquitur claim in a FELA action in Jesionowski v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 329 U.S. 452, 67 S.Ct. 401, 91 L.Ed. 416 (1947): 19 [W]hen a thing which causes injury, without fault of the injured person, is shown to be under the exclusive control of the defendant, and the injury is such as in the ordinary course of things does not occur if the one having control uses proper care, it affords reasonable evidence, in the absence of an explanation, that the injury arose from the defendant's want of care. 20 Id. at 456, 67 S.Ct. at 403 (quoting San Juan Light & Transit Co. v. Requena, 224 U.S. 89, 98-99, 32 S.Ct. 399, 401, 56 L.Ed. 680 (1912)). Following Jesionowski, other circuits have formulated more precise approaches to the doctrine's applicability. An approach that recurs in the case law of the circuits is the Fourth Circuit's formulation requiring the satisfaction of three conditions: 21 (1) the injury for which the plaintiff seeks recovery must be of a kind that ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence; (2) the injury must have been caused by some agency or instrumentality within the exclusive control of the defendant; and (3) the injury must not have been due to any contribution or voluntary activity on the part of the plaintiff. 22 Stillman v. Norfolk & W. Ry., 811 F.2d 834, 836-37 (4th Cir.1987). 23 Another formulation of the FELA res ipsa requirement articulated by the federal courts is based on the Restatement (Second) of Torts: 24 [A]n inference of causation based on the res ipsa loquitur doctrine requires that (1) the event be of a kind which ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence, (2) other responsible causes, including conduct of the plaintiff and third persons, are sufficiently eliminated by the evidence, and (3) the indicated negligence is within the scope of the defendant's duty to the plaintiff. 25 Beissel v. Pittsburgh & Lake Erie R.R. Co., 801 F.2d 143, 149 (3d Cir.1986) (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 328D (1965)), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1088, 107 S.Ct. 1296, 94 L.Ed.2d 152 (1987). 26 One of the most succinct expressions of the general rule was stated in Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Pomeroy, 239 F.2d 435 (D.C.Cir.1956), cert. denied, 353 U.S. 950, 77 S.Ct. 861, 1 L.Ed.2d 859 (1957): 27 In general, the rule is that, where an injury occurs which in the ordinary course of things would not have occurred if the one having control had used proper care, a reasonable basis is afforded, in the absence of any explanation, to attribute the injury to the lack of care on the part of the defendant. 28 Id. at 446. 29 These formulations, although helpful to a court's analysis, must be implemented with care. In Jesionowski, which remains the governing precedent, the Supreme Court emphasized that, in the context of FELA cases, federal courts were to avoid conceptualistic interpretations of the res ipsa loquitur doctrine that might unduly restrict the jury's power to draw inferences from facts. Jesionowski, 329 U.S. at 457, 67 S.Ct. at 403-04. The Fifth Circuit, in Dugas v. Kansas City Southern Railway Lines, 473 F.2d 821 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 823, 94 S.Ct. 124, 38 L.Ed.2d 56 (1973), elaborated on the Supreme Court's caution. It noted that, in Jesionowski, the Supreme Court permitted the application of the doctrine even when there was some evidence that the plaintiff's participation in the employer's activity might have produced the accident. The Fifth Circuit's discussion of Jesionowski is instructive: 30 In that case a brakeman, while in the process of switching cars, was killed when a car was derailed, throwing him to his death. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit had held that res ipsa loquitur could not be invoked in an extraordinary accident growing out of a set of circumstances which included activity of the injured person. Evidence on behalf of the railroad was sufficient to authorize, but not compel, a jury finding that the derailment was caused by the negligence of the deceased in handling the switch. There was other evidence from which a jury could have found that the derailment was caused by a defect in a frog operated with a spring mechanism. This was disputed by evidence to the effect that the frog and switch were in good condition both before and after the derailment. 31 Subsequent to a discussion of the general principles applicable to the use of res ipsa, the Supreme Court held that the rule as applied by the First Circuit 32 ... would bar juries from drawing an inference of negligence on account of unusual accidents in all operations where the injured person had himself participated in the operations, even though it was proved that his operations of the things under his control did not cause the accident. This viewpoint [un]duly restricts the power of juries to decide questions of fact, and in this case the jury's right to draw inferences from evidence and the sufficiency of that evidence to support a verdict are Federal questions. A conceptualistic interpretation of res ipsa loquitur has never been used by this Court to reduce the jury's power to draw inferences from facts. Such an interpretation unduly narrows the doctrine as this Court has applied it. 33 Dugas, 473 F.2d at 824-25 (quoting Jesionowski, 329 U.S. at 457, 67 S.Ct. at 403-04). 34 In short, the Supreme Court took the view that a jury can be instructed first to determine whether the plaintiff's conduct was a contributing factor to the accident. If the jury finds that the plaintiff's conduct did not contribute to the accident, it then can employ the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur to determine whether the accident was caused by the employer. 4 Later, however, the Supreme Court emphasized that this approach was designed for the situation in which it was clear that the occurrence, absent the possible negligence of the plaintiff, was extraordinary in nature, not a usual happening, and therefore subject to the inference that it occurred as a result of negligence. Herdman v. Pennsylvania R.R. Co., 352 U.S. 518, 520, 77 S.Ct. 455, 456, 1 L.Ed.2d 508 (1957). The rule deals only with permissible inferences from unexplained events. Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 46, 49, 68 S.Ct. 391, 393, 92 L.Ed. 468 (1948).
35 We now apply these general principles to the record before us. 36 Ms. Robinson contended at trial that her injury was caused by the abnormally severe slack action that occurred while she was riding on the ladder of the lead railroad car. She claimed that such rough slack does not occur without either equipment failure or mishandling by a railroad employee and that, as a result, her injury was caused by the negligence of the railroad. Having presented sufficient evidence to support this theory of the case, she submits, the jury should have been given a res ipsa loquitur instruction. 5 According to Ms. Robinson, the trial court's refusal to give her requested res ipsa jury instruction was prejudicial, not harmless, error. 37 When a trial court refuses to give a proposed jury instruction, we review the allegedly erroneous omission of that instruction with an eye towards the adequacy of the instructions actually given. Kovacich v. Benjamin, 951 F.2d 114, 116 (7th Cir.1991). Our role in considering jury instruction challenges is limited. See E.E.O.C. v. AIC Sec. Investigations, Ltd., 55 F.3d 1276, 1283 (7th Cir.1995). The submission of inadequate jury instructions requires reversal only if 'it appears that the jury's comprehension of the issues was so misguided that one of the parties was prejudiced.'  Soller v. Moore, 84 F.3d 964, 969 (7th Cir.1996) (quoting In re CLDC Management Corp., 72 F.3d 1347, 1353 (7th Cir.) (citations omitted), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 166, 136 L.Ed.2d 108 (1996)). To make that determination, we evaluate the jury instructions altogether, as a whole, for their sufficiency in informing the jury correctly of the applicable law. 38 Our examination of the record in this case reveals that there was an instruction about severe slack action; the jury was instructed that plaintiff claims that the defendant was negligent because defendant failed to manage and control its train to avoid excessive slack action. R.48-4 at 480. Therefore Ms. Robinson's theory of the case was placed before the jury. See United Airlines, Inc. v. United States, 111 F.3d 551, 555 (7th Cir.1997) (affirming that district court's rejection of instruction did not deprive jury of statement of critical element in the government's theory of the case); Kovacich, 951 F.2d at 116 (If the substance of the tendered instruction is sufficiently covered by other instructions, the refusal of such an instruction will not ordinarily constitute error.). In addition, we note that the jury heard extensive details about this central claim during Ms. Robinson's opening and closing statements and in the witnesses' testimony. The jury was well apprised of her theory of the case. 39 Nor can we conclude that the proposed instruction correctly stated the law of res ipsa loquitur in FELA cases as mandated by the Supreme Court in Jesionowski. It did not require the jury to conclude that the cause of her injury had to be under the defendant's exclusive control and that she, the injured person, had been without fault in the matter. 6 40 Finally, we believe that Ms. Robinson's submission must fail because there was evidence before the jury that permitted its members to conclude that her injury was due to negligence on her part and that the railroad was not negligent. Res ipsa does not apply when the accident could have occurred in the absence of the defendant's negligence. In this case, there was evidence before the jury that Ms. Robinson had positioned herself on the back of the car on which she was riding rather than on the side, the correct position. There was also evidence that there was no unusual slack action as the train came to a stop. Therefore the accident could have occurred without any negligence on the part of the railroad. 7