Opinion ID: 464793
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: FELA and Negligence Per Se

Text: 59 Plaintiff requested a jury instruction which would have required the jury to find defendant negligent as a matter of law if defendant violated an OSHA regulation and such violation was a proximate cause of plaintiff's injury. The jury instruction would also have eliminated any reduction of plaintiff's award because of contributory negligence by plaintiff. We consider first plaintiff's claim that he was entitled to an instruction on negligence per se. 60 Plaintiff's suit was brought under FELA, which creates a federal cause of action for railroad employees who have been killed or injured due to the negligence of the railroad. 45 U.S.C. Sec. 51. FELA is basically predicated upon negligence. O'Donnell v. Elgin, J. & E.R. Co., 338 U.S. 384, 391, 70 S.Ct. 200, 204, 94 L.Ed. 187 (1949). This means that if there is no statutory violation, traditional negligence principles apply. Under the traditional negligence approach, negligence per se will be found where violation of a statutory duty caused precisely the kind of harm which the statute was designed to prevent. Restatement (Second) of Torts Sec. 286 (1965). Under the facts of this case, negligence per se would be applicable; the kind of injury suffered by plaintiff, if caused by the failure to block the load, was undoubtedly what the requirement of blocking was meant to prevent. Two questions arise: does FELA incorporate the doctrine of negligence per se and, if it does, can this doctrine be applied to an OSHA violation? We turn to the first question. 61 Early in the history of FELA, many courts followed the negligence per se doctrine where violations of the major railroad safety statutes, the Safety Appliance Act, 45 U.S.C. Secs. 1-16 (1982), and the Boiler Inspection Act, 45 U.S.C. Secs. 22-23 & 28-34 (1982), were found to have caused an injury. E.g., San Antonio & A.P.R. Co. v. Wagner, 241 U.S. 476, 484, 36 S.Ct. 626, 629, 60 L.Ed. 1110 (1916). It soon became evident, however, that limiting liability for railroad workers under the negligence per se doctrine to those situations where the statutory violation caused precisely the kind of harm which the statute was designed to prevent contravened the intent of Congress to provide liberal recovery for injured railroad workers. Kernan v. American Dredging Co., 355 U.S. 426, 432-35, 78 S.Ct. 394, 398-400, 2 L.Ed.2d 382 (1958) (reviewing history of application of FELA). The Supreme Court, therefore, refused to limit recovery to the negligence per se doctrine in FELA cases, holding that a statutory violation created liability under FELA if the statutory violation contributes in fact to the death or injury in suit, without regard to whether the injury flowing from the breach was the injury the statute sought to prevent. Id. at 433, 78 S.Ct. at 398. 62 We have here a classic case of negligence per se: the injury which occurred was precisely what the safety statute was designed to prevent. We have seen that to the extent that FELA has departed from its original grounding in the law of negligence, it has departed in the direction of liberalizing recovery. It would seem, therefore, that at the very least a violation of OSHA regulations amounting to negligence per se should be sufficient to establish liability under Sec. 1 of FELA. See Reyes v. Vantage S.S. Co., 609 F.2d 140, 143 (5th Cir.1980) (failure to follow any Coast Guard regulation which is a cause of an injury establishes negligence per se  under the Jones Act, which provides FELA recovery for sailors). 63 We now turn to the question of whether the doctrine of negligence per se can be applied to an OSHA regulation under FELA. As FELA developed, the doctrine of negligence per se and then absolute liability was limited to the two main railroad safety statutes, the Safety Appliance and Boiler Inspection Acts, if for no other reason than that these two Acts covered the major sources of danger to employees of the railroads. It was not until the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. Sec. 688, was enacted giving injured sailors the same substantive cause of action provided to railroad workers by FELA that the question arose whether violations of other safety statutes would also result in absolute liability under the principles of FELA. The Supreme Court considered this question in Kernan, 355 U.S. 426, 78 S.Ct. 394, a case involving a sailor who was killed when an open-flame kerosene lamp on a boat he was towing touched off flammable vapors on the surface of the water and caused the boat he was on to catch fire. The lamp was only three feet above the water, violating a Coast Guard regulation requiring that it be at least eight feet from the surface of the water. The regulation had not been enacted to prevent fires, but to make sure that navigational lights were high enough to be seen by other vessels and prevent collisions. The question was whether the violation of the Coast Guard regulation should lead to the same absolute liability under the Jones Act which had been found to result from violations of the Safety Appliance and Boiler Inspection Acts under FELA. The Court found that, with the enactment of FELA and the Jones Act, Congress intended the creation of no static remedy, but one which would be developed and enlarged to meet changing conditions and changing concepts of industry's duty toward its workers. Id. at 432, 78 S.Ct. at 398. It held, therefore, that under the Jones Act violation of the navigational statute resulted in absolute liability for the sailor's death. 64 Under the Kernan view of FELA, new safety statutes such as OSHA should be given the same treatment as well-established statutes. Therefore, FELA presents no obstacle to the application of the negligence per se doctrine to OSHA violations in a case such as this. In fact, in the context of this case, there is no difference in application and result between the doctrines of negligence per se and absolute liability; if plaintiff proves violation of the regulations and causation, defendant is absolutely liable. This does not mean that we are holding that absolute liability should apply to the violation of OSHA regulations under FELA. Plaintiff has not asked for such a ruling in this court or below and the facts of this case do not require that we decide this issue.