Court Opinion

ID: 9425888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:07.207982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.138435
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
The Court in its decided cases has traveled far in order to accord Federal Employers’ Liability Act coverage to a variety of employment situations. See, e. g., Shenker v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 374 U. S. 1, 5 (1963), and North Carolina R. Co. v. Zachary, 232 U. S. 248, 260 (1914). Its many decisions are now a well-chalked slate that should not be significantly erased without good reasons. Neither should the Court change a mature and highly developed legal standard, long accepted by Congress, without explaining those reasons or even saying what the effect will be.
For me, the Court’s per curiam opinion in Baker v. Texas & Pacific R. Co., 359 U. S. 227 (1959), controls this case. There the injured workman had been hired by a corporation engaged in work along the railroad’s main-line right-of-way. The work consisted of pumping sand and cement into the roadbed in order to strengthen and stabilize it. The workman was struck by a train while engaged at this job. The petitioners contended that he was killed while he was “employed” by the railroad, within the meaning of the Act. Evidence on the question was introduced, but the trial judge declined to submit the issue to the jury, holding as a matter of law that the workman was not in such a relationship to the railroad at the time of his death as to entitle him to the Act’s protection. The state courts refused to disturb the judgment for the railroad.
This Court, however, held that the Act does not use the terms “employee” and “employed” in any special *342sense, and that the familiar general legal problems as to whose employee or servant a worker is at a given time present themselves as matters of federal law under the Act. Each case, the Court said, must be decided on its peculiar facts and “ 'ordinarily no one feature of the relationship is determinative.’ ” The Court concluded that it was “perfectly plain” that the question “contains factual elements such as to make it one for the jury under appropriate instructions as to the various relevant factors under law.” Id., at 228. It pointed out that the petitioners introduced evidence tending to prove that the work “was part of the maintenance task of the railroad”; that the road “furnished the material to be pumped into the roadbed”; and that a supervisor, admittedly in the employ of the railroad, in the daily course of the work exercised directive control over the details of the job. Ibid. The railroad introduced evidence tending to controvert this. The Court then held that an issue for determination by the jury was presented.
So it is here. Kelley was injured at the railroad’s loading-and-unloading ramp in San Francisco. He and others were unchaining new automobiles for unloading when he fell from the third level of the railroad car. He was hired, paid by, and could be discharged by the railroad’s wholly owned subsidiary. All the officers and directors of that subsidiary were officers or directors of the railroad. The subsidiary was the only company then having a contract with the railroad to unload cars at that ramp. Kelley had been employed at this particular job and at this site for eight years and was paid on an hourly basis. The unloading was the railroad’s responsibility pursuant to its contractual obligation to its shipper. The railroad supplied the necessary working area. The work performed by Kelley was unskilled. Railroad employees had the responsibility daily to check the safety of the cars and to make necessary repairs. There was evidence *343that the railroad exercised a degree of control over the unloading operation and that PMT employees performing this work frequently felt they had to heed the railroad supervisor’s command.*
All this, it seems to me, is enough to create an issue for the trier of fact, just as the Baker case illustrates and as it teaches. The trier could find that Kelley was doing work of a kind and in a way and under such supervision of the Southern Pacific as made him an employee of that railroad for purposes of the PELA.
I feel the Court, ante, at 325 n. 6, gives undue emphasis to the District Court’s treatment of findings of fact proposed by the petitioner. Every actively practicing trial attorney knows that some judges readily adopt findings presented by counsel; that other judges almost always reject proposed findings and prefer to draft their own or have their clerks prepare them; and that still others adopt a middle course. In this case the District Court produced a judgment for the injured workman. I doubt whether there can be much significance in the adjustment-of-proposed-findings route by which that judgment was reached.
While the Court disclaims any modification of the standards for allowing questions of fact in FELA cases to go to the jury, its decision here suggests otherwise. The Court implies that supervision must be “day-to-day” in order to constitute “supervision” for purposes of creating “employee” status under the FELA. Ante, at 331. Does this mean that orders must be issued with a certain frequency (e. g., every day, or most days) or merely in a certain manner (e. g., the “daily” normal “course of the work,” Baker, 359 U. S., at 228-229)? The *344Court does not say. I suspect that trial judges will be inclined to resolve most doubts against plaintiffs if their findings are to be so vulnerable to challenge.
I also fear that the Court’s holding may be one that opens the way for the railroads of this country to avoid FELA liability. That way apparently is to contract out large portions of maintenance and loading and unloading responsibilities that normally are part of the railroad’s operation.
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and I therefore dissent.

There was testimony by PMT employees that in practice they took instructions and directions from Southern Pacific supervisors, and that failing to follow them could jeopardize their jobs. E. g., App. 57.