Court Opinion

ID: 9462879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:52:40.826668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:50.206911
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
I concur solely on the ground that the exclusion of proof that other railroads had installed brake valve guards was error, since the evidence was relevant to the claim that the plaintiff’s accident was caused by the defendants’ failure “to provide a guard or safety device over the emergency brake valve” with the result that “the valve of the emergency air brake protruded out into the space that the plaintiff occupied while working in the cab.” See Plaintiff’s Answers to Interrogatories, Pars. 6 and 7.
Even assuming that the jolt from normal slack might cause a fireman standing in the cab to be thrown to one side, plaintiff’s theory was that a brake valve guard would have avoided or lessened the injury caused by his striking the protruding brake valve. The evidence offered as to the existence of a guard in other cabs was pertinent to that claim. In rebuttal the railroad, of course, might offer evidence that such guards are installed for a different purpose, and would not have prevented or lessened plaintiff’s injuries.
Even taking the most liberal view of jury trial rights in an FELA case, however, I cannot agree that the jury might properly find that plaintiff’s accident was caused “in whole or in part,” 45 U.S.C. § 52, by the defective engine cab seat. Plaintiff contends that the accident occurred when, as he was rising from the forward seat, he was thrown to one side by the concededly normal force of the slack. As Judge Hays observes, the plaintiff’s theory was that if the front seat had swiveled properly he would not have attempted to rise from it and thus the accident would not have occurred. On the other hand, if he had decided to sit in the rear seat in the first place or if he had decided not to change seats the accident would also presumably not have occurred. Conversely if he had decided to stand in the first place the accident might well have occurred. Thus the failure of the seat to swivel was at best a “but for” occasion for his rising rather than a cause of the accident. As we have observed in the past with respect to a similar attempt to predicate FELA liability on the failure to distinguish between an occasion and a cause of an accident:
*513“Speaking literally it cannot be denied that in the case at bar failure to supply toilet facilities ‘played a part’ in producing plaintiff’s injury. If defendant had supplied indoor toilet facilities plaintiff would not have been where the passenger’s baggage struck her. It is not enough, however, that the injury would not have happened ‘but for’ the negligence. Assume that plaintiff here, because of the delay incident to her long way around via the car’s lavatory, took a train that arrived at Bloomfield fifteen minutes later than the one which she would have taken if toilet facilities had been furnished at her place of employment and that she was struck by an automobile in the street in Bloomfield on her way home from the station. She would have escaped injury ‘but for’ the failure to supply toilet facilities, yet the causation certainly would not even meet the modest requirements of the terms of the F.E.L.A. The fault would be too far removed both in space and time from the injury.” Nicholson v. Erie R. R. Co., 253 F.2d 939, 941 (2d Cir. 1958).