Court Opinion

ID: 9445746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:37:27.687188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:23.774264
License: Public Domain

SCHNACKENBERG, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
While frankly conceding that “plaintiff’s conclusion as to what ‘must’ have happened, that he ‘must have slipped’, is, no doubt, speculation”, and that the verdict in this case “is based upon one inference which rests in turn upon another inference”, Judge Grubb, in stating the pivotal ground of his decision, makes this startling assertion:
“Under the recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court in F.E.L.A. cases, speculation, conjecture and possibilities suffice to support a jury verdict.”
*838Inasmuch as he applies this utterance to the testimony of witnesses and limits it to Federal Employer Liability Act cases, sui generis, it constitutes judicial heresy without support in the decisions of the Supreme Court, recent or otherwise. He cites no case in support of this statement. He has obviously misled himself by his reading of the decision in Lavender v. Kurn, 327 U.S. 645, 66 S.Ct. 740, 90 L.Ed. 916, which he fails to notice relates not to speculation and conjecture by witnesses in testifying, but relates to speculation and conjecture by a jury in drawing inferences from the evidence heard on a trial. The court, 327 U.S. at page 653, 66 S.Ct. at page 744, said:
“It is no answer to say that the jury’s verdict involved speculation and conjecture. Whenever facts are in dispute or the evidence is such that fair-minded men may draw different inferences, a measure of speculation and conjecture is required on the part of those whose duty it is to settle the dispute by choosing what seems to them to be the most reasonable inference. Only when there is a complete absence of probative facts to support the conclusion reached does a reversible error appear. But where, as here, there is an evidentiary basis for the jury’s verdict, the jury is free to discard or disbelieve whatever facts are inconsistent with its conclusion. And the appellate court’s function is exhausted when that evidentiary basis becomes apparent, it being immaterial that the court might draw a contrary inference or feel that another conclusion is more reasonable.”
In the present case it is the witnesses themselves who are doing the speculating and conjecturing, as hereinafter demonstrated.
Judge Grubb’s opinion would support the verdict despite “a complete absence of probative facts” showing employer negligence.
The majority opinion is the result of what my colleagues feel is the irresistible compulsion of recent Supreme Court decisions in Federal Employers Liability Act cases. I do not read those cases as requiring a reversal of the district court’s action. The Supreme Court has disclaimed any intention of making a railroad an insurer of its employees. Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 336 U.S. 53, 62, 69 S.Ct. 413, 93 L.Ed. 497.
Whether the district judge erred in entering a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of the plaintiff depends on whether the proofs in this record justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury for which plaintiff seeks damages. Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 506, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493. Judicial appraisal of the proofs to determine whether a jury question is presented is narrowly limited to the single inquiry whether with reason, the conclusion may be drawn that negligence of the employer played any part at all in the injury. The statute imposes liability to pay damages for injury due in whole or in part to the employer’s negligence. Ibid., 352 U.S. 507, 77 S.Ct. 448.
There is no evidence in the record that, on the evening when plaintiff bumped his head on his desk, there were any cinders, pebbles, grease or other foreign matter on the floor. Even if we waive the hearsay evidence rule in order to support plaintiff’s case, we can find no evidence, substantial, small, slight or even perceptible, of the presence of any foreign substance on the floor on the day of the accident.
He testified that, in order to put an adding machine under his desk, he “stooped down” on his “toe-tips, balancing the machine in” his arms as he crawled into the knee opening of the desk, and that, after he got the machine under the desk, he got a bump on his head as he was backing out. He added, “I must have slipped.” A motion to strike the latter part of the answer was *839overruled. He further said, “I lost my balance somehow and bumped my head on the edge of the drawer as I was getting out from under the desk. As I was getting out, I say I don’t know whether I lost my balance, or not. Anyway, I got a terrific blow on my head.” He further testified he had Mr. Marjanian, who worked at a desk directly facing and touching his desk, “carry my adding machine out to the car, and warm the car up and bring it up to building 100 for me. * * * I finished locking up the building, and then I went out to the car, and I drove him home and then I went home.”
He reported the injury to his head about a year later.
Marjanian testified that he handed Brown’s adding machine to plaintiff, who put it under his desk; but that he did not see him do it. Marjanian testified that he heard a noise, looked and saw plaintiff holding his head, that plaintiff told him to take his key and start his car which he did—letting his car run. He then testified that he came back and plaintiff “started to tell me that he had slipped under his desk and hit his head under his desk; he told me he slipped on some cinders or pebbles; I couldn’t tell you exactly what he said at that time.”
Plaintiff admitted that he had testified at a deposition hearing that, after he got the machine under the desk, he backed up, scooted out and then he did not know how it happened; “all I do know and do remember is that in backing out in that stooped position my one foot must have slipped, and, catching myself, I must have straightened up, and then I banged my head up there and everything went blank;” that he could not tell which foot slipped or “what it slipped on, other than just grime on the floor or maybe grease.”
Plaintiff’s wife testified that, when he arrived home that night, around the cuffs and legs of his trousers “there seemed to be a grease or something at least foreign”. There is no evidence that he did not get the grease on his pants legs on the way home, in his car or elsewhere. Neither plaintiff nor Marjanian testified to seeing any grease or other foreign substance on plaintiff’s pants legs when he left the office to go home.
The relevant parts of the evidence, most favorable to plaintiff, above referred to, lack probative effect. Obviously, when plaintiff testified that he “must have slipped” and he “must have straightened up”, he was not testifying to facts. He was conjecturing or reasoning ex post facto what had occurred. Such statements are not evidence of what actually occurred. They are plaintiff’s retrospective opinion of what he thinks occurred. His testimony that he lost his balance “somehow” and bumped his head as he was getting out from under the desk is no proof that any substance on the floor caused him to slip. Marjanian testified that a considerable time after the accident plaintiff told him that he (plaintiff) slipped on some cinders or pebbles, and, in the same breath, Marjanian added that he could not tell exactly what he said at that time. Of course, whatever Marjanian testified that plaintiff then said to him was hearsay evidence, which, not being objected to, we may consider for what it is worth. But, as Marjanian’s answer includes his voluntary contemporaneous admission that he could not tell exactly what plaintiff said, his testimony, if relied on to prove employer negligence, is eviscerated.
Plaintiff testified that he “could not say” what the condition of the floor was on the evening he bumped his head. The record shows that it was the regular custom for janitors to sweep the floor of this office twice daily; about 9:30 A.M. and about 1:30 or 1:45 P.M. There is no evidence that they missed this chore on the day of the accident. Neither plaintiff nor Marjanian testified that he saw any cinders, pebbles, grease, dirt or other foreign substance on the floor under or around the desk at the time of the accident or thereafter. This is especially significant in view of Marjanian’s testimony that he was present when he heard a noise and saw plaintiff holding his head and he was also there after he *840(Marjanian) had started plaintiff’s car and returned to the office, and plaintiff said that he slipped on some cinders or ■pebbles. Having heard a noise accompanying plaintiff’s bumping of his head on the desk and having heard plaintiff’s later statement that he had slipped on some cinders or pebbles, it is incredible that Marjanian would not have looked at the floor where the accident occurred. Moreover, the absence of any testimony that there was grease on the floor under or near the desk makes irrelevant the testimony of plaintiff’s wife that she saw grease on his pants legs when he arrived home after the accident.
The very gist of plaintiff’s case is the alleged, but unproved, presence of a foreign matter on the floor under or in front of the desk. The failure to prove the presence of such matter at the time that plaintiff struck his head clearly distinguishes this case from the recent cases of Webb v. Illinois Central R. Co., 352 U.S. 512, 77 S.Ct. 451, 1 L.Ed.2d 503, where there was evidence of a large cinder embedded in the roadbed, Ferguson v. Moore-McCormack Lines, 352 U.S. 521, 77 S.Ct. 457, 1 L.Ed.2d 511, where the evidence showed that the Injured employee was furnished with an inadequate tool, Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493, where the evidence showed the exact conditions which created a likelihood that the employee would suffer just such an injury as he did, and Lavender v. Kurn, 327 U.S. 645, 66 S.Ct. 740, 90 L.Ed. 916, where there was evidence of the existence of a mail hook on the defendant’s train.
To paraphrase the language of the court in Moore v. Chesapeake & O. R. Co., 340 U.S. 573, at page 577, 71 S.Ct. 428, 430, 95 L.Ed. 547 (a case involving a fall from the footboard of an engine), we would have to say—“to sustain plaintiff, one would have to infer from no evidence at all that there was a foreign substance under or around the desk prior to and at the time that plaintiff fell, and then infer that he fell because of the foreign substance. This would be speculation run riot. Speculation cannot supply the place of proof. Galloway v. United States, 319 U.S. 372, 395, 63 S.Ct. 1077, 87 L.Ed. 1458.”
After full deliberation, the district judge entered judgment notwithstanding the verdict. I would affirm.