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

Heading: Application of FELA cases

Text: As noted above, CSX urges us to follow the rationale set forth in Justice Souter's concurring opinion. Justice Souter, CSX argues, persuasively demonstrates how the courts of appeals have gone awry in interpreting Rogers. CSX urges us to accept Justice Souter's critique and to realign our own case law with that of the Supreme Court. In righting our course, CSX notes, we would not be alone. Most recently, the Supreme Court of Utah, prompted by the Court's decision in Sorrell, has read Rogers in a more guarded way and held that common-law proximate cause is the correct standard of causation under the FELA. See Raab v. Utah Ry. Co., 221 P.3d 219 (Utah 2009). [7] Justice Souter's critique of the existing case law is not without considerable force. Section 1 of the FELA could be read only as abrogating the common-law rule of contributory negligence and not as articulating a general standard for negligence. Even after Rogers, the Supreme Court has instructed that, for purposes of the FELA, unless common-law principles are expressly rejected in the text of the statute, they are entitled to great weight. Gottshall, 512 U.S. at 544, 114 S.Ct. 2396; see also Sorrell, 549 U.S. at 165-66, 127 S.Ct. 799 (Absent express language to the contrary, the elements of a FELA claim are determined by reference to the common law.). Proximate causation is not explicitly mentioned in the statute, and the Court never has identified proximate causation as among those principles of common law that have been abrogated by the FELA. Gottshall, 512 U.S. at 543-44, 114 S.Ct. 2396. Furthermore, Justice Souter's reading of Rogers is a plausible one. As Justice Souter correctly explains in his concurrence, Rogers itself was a case that involved multiple causes, and much of Rogers speaks directly to the issue of when a case with multiple causes must be submitted to a jury. See Rogers, 352 U.S. at 504-05, 77 S.Ct. 443; Sorrell, 549 U.S. at 174-75, 127 S.Ct. 799 (Souter, J., concurring) (We granted certiorari in Rogers to establish the test for submitting a case to a jury when the evidence would permit a finding that an injury had multiple causes.). Nevertheless, there are several important countervailing considerations that preclude us from embracing Justice Souter's view at this juncture. First, we must recognize that, in Sorrell, the Supreme Court did not address, much less decide, the issue that CSX would have us decide today in this case. Justice Souter's concurrence garnered the votes of only two other members of the Court. The majority of the Court believed that causation in general was not properly raised. Although there is some indication that, had it reached the substantive issue, at least some members of the majority may have been sympathetic to Justice Souter's view, see Sorrell, 549 U.S. at 170-71, 127 S.Ct. 799 (suggesting that Section 1 could be understood as simply . . . reflect[ing] the fact that contributory negligence is no longer a complete bar to recovery), we have been admonished not to anticipate future actions of the Supreme Court. State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20, 118 S.Ct. 275, 139 L.Ed.2d 199 (1997) (The Court of Appeals was correct in applying that principle [of stare decisis] despite disagreement with Albrecht, for it is this Court's prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents.); Nanda v. Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of Ill., 312 F.3d 852, 854 (7th Cir.2002) (Ripple, J., in chambers) (In deciding a case, a circuit judge must not anticipate future changes in jurisprudential course by the Supreme Court of the United States; it is the task of a circuit judge to apply established doctrine.). A related consideration is that we must treat with great respect the prior pronouncements of the Supreme Court, even if those pronouncements are technically dicta. See Nichol v. Pullman Standard, Inc., 889 F.2d 115, 120 n. 8 (7th Cir.1989). As noted above, Justice Souter stipulate[d] that clarity was not well served by the statement in Rogers that a case must go to a jury where `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.' Sorrell, 549 U.S. at 175, 127 S.Ct. 799, 166 L.Ed.2d 638. Justice Souter believed that this language spoke to apportioning liability among parties, each of whom had proximately caused the damage. Id. With great respect to Justice Souter's explanation, we are not free to ignore the subsequent statements by the Supreme Court that suggest a much broader reading of this language. Indeed, in Gottshall, the Court stated: We have liberally construed FELA to further Congress' remedial goal. For example, we held in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493 (1957), that a relaxed standard of causation applies under FELA. 512 U.S. at 543, 114 S.Ct. 2396. We also cannot discount pre- Rogers case law that is consistent with a broader reading of the quoted language in Rogers. See Coray, 335 U.S. at 524, 69 S.Ct. 275 (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 interpretative purpose. 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.); see also Crane, 395 U.S. at 166, 89 S.Ct. 1706 (stating that a FELA plaintiff is not required to prove common-law proximate causation but only that his injury resulted `in whole or in part' from the railroad's violation of the Act). Additionally, before creating a division of authority among the circuits, we take respectful note that our current interpretation of Rogers is in accord with the interpretation adopted by all of our sister circuits. All have taken the view, based on Rogers, that there is a relaxed standard of probable cause under the FELA. [8] Adopting Justice Souter's interpretation of Rogers, therefore, would not only run contrary to our own case law, but would cause a conflict with every other court of appeals, a step that we do not take lightly. See Russ v. Watts, 414 F.3d 783, 788 (7th Cir.2005) (invoking the interest in avoiding unnecessary intercircuit conflicts as a compelling reason for reevaluating our own precedent (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)); United States v. Gwaltney, 790 F.2d 1378, 1388 n. 4 (9th Cir.1986) (Unnecessary conflicts among the circuits are to be avoided.); United States v. Scaife, 749 F.2d 338, 344 (6th Cir.1984) (agreeing that intercircuit conflicts are to be avoided if possible). Finally, because we deal, at bottom, with a statute enacted by Congress, we must give respectful attention to the Legislative Branch's reaction to the Supreme Court's treatment of the FELA. Congressional inaction, in the wake of Rogers and circuit law broadly interpreting Rogers, counsels against adopting a common-law formulation of probable cause in FELA cases. As we noted in a prior FELA case: We will not assume that Congress is unaware of the judicial gloss that the Act has received. If the Act as it has been interpreted and applied does not correctly reflect what was intended by the legislative branch then the change must be made there. The duty of this court is to follow what is now well-established authority. Heater v. Chesapeake & Ohio Ry. Co., 497 F.2d 1243, 1246 (7th Cir.1974). Congress, faced with the Supreme Court's articulation of the governing standards in FELA cases and the consistent interpretation of that articulation by courts of appeals, has not seen fit to amend the FELA to clarify or correct the standard of causation that has been applied almost universally. In light of these considerations, we decline to hold that, in light of the Supreme Court's opinion in Sorrell, common-law proximate causation is required to establish liability under the FELA. Having reached this conclusion, we cannot say that the district court committed instructional error in refusing CSX's proffered instruction. Similarly, we find no error in the causation instruction given to the jury. The instruction stated: Defendant `caused or contributed to' plaintiff's injury if defendant's negligence played a partno matter how smallin bringing about the injury. R.43 at 13. This language simply paraphrases the Supreme Court's own words in Rogers and, therefore, correctly states the law as the Supreme Court has articulated it up to now. See Rogers, 352 U.S. at 506, 77 S.Ct. 443 (requiring that a case be submitted to the jury when 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). [9]