Opinion ID: 230
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rogers and related cases

Text: These early cases never have been overruled explicitly; however, thirty years later, one commentator observed that such cases are definitely inconsistent with later decisions and it is safe to say would not be followed today. William H. DeParcq, A Decade of Progress Under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 18 Law & Contemp. Probs. 257, 268 (1953). Specifically, the author referenced, inter alia, the Supreme Court's decision in Coray v. Southern Pacific Co., 335 U.S. 520, 69 S.Ct. 275, 93 L.Ed. 208 (1949). Coray involved an employee who had died as a result of a collision between a freight train and a one-man flat top motorcar. The motorcar was following the train when the train, as a result of a defect in its braking system, stopped suddenly. Although the motorcar was equipped with brakes, both employees on the car were looking backward and did not see that the train in front of them had stopped. The state supreme court affirmed the directed verdict in favor of the defendant on the ground that the violation of the safety rule could not constitute the basis for the company's negligence because its protection against defective brakes did not extend to employees following and crashing into a train which stopped suddenly because of defective brake appliances. Id. at 522, 69 S.Ct. 275. Additionally, the state supreme court held that the evidence failed to show that the defective appliance was the `legal' cause of the crash and death of decedent. Id. Specifically, the state court discussed distinctions between `proximate cause' in the legal sense, deemed a sufficient cause to impose liability, and `cause' in the `philosophical sense,' deemed insufficient to impose liability. Id. at 523, 69 S.Ct. 275. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, rejected this distinction; it stated: The language selected by Congress to fix liability in cases of this kind is simple and direct. Consideration of its meaning by the introduction of dialectical subtleties can serve no useful interpretive purposes. The statute declares that railroads shall be responsible for their employees' deaths resulting in whole or in part from defective appliances such as were here maintained. 45 U.S.C. § 51. And to make its purpose crystal clear, Congress has also provided that no such employee ... shall be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence in any case where a violation of the Safety Appliance Act, such as the one here, contributed to the ... death of such employee. 45 U.S.C. § 53.... These air-brakes were defective; for this reason alone the train suddenly and unexpectedly stopped; a motor track car following at about the same rate of speed and operated by an employee looking in another direction crashed into the train; all of these circumstances were inseparably related to one another in time and space. The jury could have found that decedent's death resulted from any or all of the foregoing circumstances. Id. at 524, 69 S.Ct. 275 (parallel citations omitted); see also Tiller v. Atl. Coast Line R.R. Co., 323 U.S. 574, 578, 65 S.Ct. 421, 89 L.Ed. 465 (1945) (reversing decision of court of appeals, reinstating jury verdict and holding that question whether violation of a safety rule caused the employee's death was one for the jury); Tennant v. Peoria & Pekin Union Ry. Co., 321 U.S. 29, 33-34, 64 S.Ct. 409, 88 L.Ed. 520 (1944) (same); cf. Kelley v. S. Pac. Co., 419 U.S. 318, 334, 95 S.Ct. 472, 42 L.Ed.2d 498 (1974) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (observing that, since the 1939 Amendments to FELA, the Court has interpreted the Act in the spirit of those amendments and a [g]radual liberalization has occurred, and the narrow, technical approach of earlier years has been eschewed). In reviewing some of these same decisions, our own court has concluded that, over the course of the FELA's history, the concept of proximate cause had broadened: Perhaps the reconciliation of the earlier accepted, sometimes called the old-fashioned idea, of proximate cause as the direct or efficient cause of the accident (as would be the district court's illustration of a shock from a defective electric bell ringer causing injuries and death) in cases where this statute applies, and the conception of proximate cause which now obtains, is to be found in the enlarging phrase of the statute. It provides that if the railroad's negligence  in part  results in the injuries or death, liability arises. Under the old concept of proximate cause, that cause must have been direct, the complete, the responsible, the efficient cause of the injury. Contributing and remotely related causes were not sufficient. Now, if the negligence of the railroad has causal relation,if the injury or death resulted  in part  from defendants' negligence, there is liability. The words in part have enlarged the field or scope of proximate causesin these railroad injury cases. These words suggest that there may be a plurality of causes, each of which is sufficient to permit a jury to assess a liability. If a cause may create liability, even though it be but a partial cause, it would seem that such partial cause may be a producer of a later cause. For instance, the cause may be the first acting cause which sets in motion the second cause which was the immediate, the direct cause of the accident. Eglsaer v. Scandrett, 151 F.2d 562, 565-66 (7th Cir.1945). Therefore, although more recent decisions still might have employed language of proximate cause, that term did not have the same teeth. According to commentators, this new conception of proximate cause crystallized in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Co., 352 U.S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493 (1957). See Charles H. Traeger, III, Legal Cause, Proximate Cause, and Comparative Negligence in the FELA, 18 Stan. L.Rev. 929, 932 (1966). In Rogers, a railroad laborer was given the job of burning dead vegetation bordering tracks which ran over a dirt `dump' with sloping sides and a ballast topping. Rogers, 352 U.S. at 501, 77 S.Ct. 443. The foreman had instructed the plaintiff and his co-workers to stop what they were doing when a train passed and to take positions off the tracks and ties to observe the journals of the passing train for hotboxes. Id. at 502, 77 S.Ct. 443. The plaintiff was standing a few feet from an adjacent culvert, watching for hotboxes, when he became enveloped in smoke and flames fanned by a passing train. Id. The plaintiff covered his face, retreated quickly back on the culvert and slipped and fell from the top of the culvert, suffering [] serious injuries. Id. A jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed. On writ of certiorari, the Supreme Court held that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury finding for the petitioner. Id. at 503, 77 S.Ct. 443. It noted that the state supreme court had based its reversal upon its finding of an alleged admission by the petitioner that he knew it was his primary duty to watch the fire. From that premise the Missouri court reasoned that petitioner was inattentive to the fire and that the emergency which confronted him was an emergency brought about by himself. Id. at 503-04, 77 S.Ct. 443 (footnote omitted). The Court then evaluated the state court's rationale: We interpret the foregoing to mean that the Missouri court found as a matter of law that the petitioner's conduct was the sole cause of his mishap. But when the petitioner agreed that his primary duty was to watch the fire he did not also say that he was relieved of the duty to stop to watch a passing train for hotboxes. Indeed, no witness testified that the instruction was countermanded. At best, uncertainty as to the fact arises from the petitioner's testimony, and in that circumstance not the court, but the jury, was the tribunal to determine the fact. We may assume that the jury could properly have reached the court's conclusion. But, as the probative facts also supported with reason the verdict favorable to the petitioner, the decision was exclusively for the jury to make. The jury was instructed to return a verdict for the respondent if it was found that negligence of the petitioner was the sole cause of his mishap. We must take it that the verdict was obedient to the trial judge's charge and that the jury found that such was not the case but that petitioner's injury resulted at least in part from the respondent's negligence. Id. at 504-05, 77 S.Ct. 443 (footnotes omitted). The Supreme Court also believed that the state court opinion could be read as basing its reversal on the ground that it appeared to the court that the petitioner's conduct was at least as probable a cause for his mishap as any negligence of the respondent, and that in such case there was no case for the jury. Id. at 505, 77 S.Ct. 443. The Supreme Court rejected this idea: But that would mean that there is no jury question in actions under this statute, although the employee's proofs support with reason a verdict in his favor, unless the judge can say that the jury may exclude the idea that his injury was due to causes with which the defendant was not connected, or, stated another way, unless his proofs are so strong that the jury, on grounds of probability, may exclude a conclusion favorable to the defendant. That is not the governing principle defining the proof which requires a submission to the jury in these cases. The Missouri court's opinion implies its view that this is the governing standard by saying that the proofs must show that the injury would not have occurred but for the negligence of his employer, and that [t]he test of whether there is causal connection is that, absent the negligent act the injury would not have occurred. That is language of proximate causation which makes a jury question dependent upon whether the jury may find that the defendant's negligence was the sole, efficient, producing cause of injury. Under this statute the test of a jury case is simply whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought. It does not matter that, from the evidence, the jury may also with reason, on grounds of probability, attribute the result to other causes, including the employee's contributory negligence.... The statute expressly imposes liability upon the employer to pay damages for injury or death due in whole or in part  to its negligence. (Emphasis added.) Id. at 505-07, 77 S.Ct. 443 (emphasis added; footnotes omitted).