Court Opinion

ID: 9444831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:13:33.628026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:01.667132
License: Public Domain

BIGGS, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
The plaintiff was employed in a department of the defendant Railroad where approximately 325,000 original tracings are on file. These tracings are master prints which cover “all mechanical equipment, cars, locomotives, trains, etc., and all types of structures including bridges, trackage, etc.” used or maintained on the defendant’s interstate system. Blueprints are made from the master prints. It was the duty of the plaintiff, from time to time, to remove master prints from the files, take them to another employee who would blueprint them, and return them to the files. The blueprints would then be sent to various points.
The majority opinion seems to differentiate between office workers and employees actually engaged in transportation, and also between the relative importance of employees’ positions as affecting transportation. Such an interpretation does not seem to be in accordance with the 1939 amendment to the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U.S. C.A. § 51, 53 Stat. 1404. The duties of the plaintiff, like those of everyone else employed in the same department, furthered interstate commerce. It should be noted that a disjunctive “or” follows the first semi-colon of the amendment and, if the statute be read literally, as I think it must, furtherance of interstate commerce suffices tq bring an employee within the purview of the amendment: it is not necessary that that employment “directly or closely and substantially” affect interstate commerce. As was pointed out by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, Scarborough v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 1944, 154 Pa.Super. 129, 132, 35 A.2d 603, 605, the amending language “is very comprehensive, so inclusive indeed that most railroad employes come within its scope.” Such a result may be unfortunate but seems to have been the intention of Congress.
I would reverse the judgment of the court below.