Court Opinion

ID: 9475945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:43:16.738933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:02.284430
License: Public Domain

CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I.
Concurring in the judgment in Inman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, 361 U.S. 138, 142, 80 S.Ct. 242, 244, 4 L.Ed.2d 198 (1959), Justice Whittaker stated:
Reduced to substance, the simple facts are that petitioner, a crossing flagman, while standing in a well-lighted intersection alongside a passing train in the nighttime and swinging a lighted red lantern in each hand, was struck, knocked down and run over by a drunken driver. What, I ask, did respondent do or omit that caused or contributed to cause that casualty? How could it have prevented the casualty? Petitioner says that respondent failed to provide him with “enough protection.” About the only way, as I perceive, that respondent could protect its crossing flagmen against injury from such lawless conduct by third persons would be to provide them with military tanks and make sure they stay in them while within or moving about crossing-intersections in the performance of their duties — and I am not even sure that this method, though ironclad, would be certain protection to a flagman against lawless injury by third persons, *160for someone might shoot him, an act not very different, it seems to me, from the drunken driver’s conduct which injured petitioner in this case, and for which injuries he insists, and four members of this Court agree, a jury should be permitted to require respondent to pay damages. How this can be thought to square with any known concept of “negligence” by respondent is beyond me.
Although not employing as colorful an analogy, the majority in Inman held that the conclusion could not reasonably be drawn that “negligence of the employer played any part at all in the injury____” Id. at 140, 80 S.Ct. at 243.
It is undoubtedly true that the insistent locomotion of judicial interpretation has over time rendered the railroad employer liable for injuries incurred by his employees in which the employer’s “negligence played any part, even the slightest.” Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, 352 U.S. 500, 506, 77 S.Ct. 443, 448, 1 L.Ed.2d 493 (1956). The Act does not make the employer an insurer, however. Inman, supra, at 140, 80 S.Ct. at 243. That the harm complained of was reasonably foreseeable is still “an essential ingredient of Federal Employers’ Liability Act negligence.” Gallick v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, 372 U.S. 108, 117, 83 S.Ct. 659, 665, 9 L.Ed.2d 618 (1962).
The panel opinion states that, because “it should be easily foreseeable that many motorists, inebriated or not, might be unduly excited or frustrated because of real or imagined intrusions upon their rights to use the common streets and highways,” it was reasonably foreseeable that the train’s partial blockage of the railroad crossing would have “incited some senseless motorist to take reckless action.” I believe that the panel has misapplied the standard defining reasonable foreseeability.
Because there was testimony that motorists had upon occasion illegally crossed in front of a train partially blocking an intersection, a conclusion that the railroad could reasonably foresee that event re-occurring is correct. That occurrence, however, was not what happened in this case. The defendant railroad, presumably in light of its experience regarding illegal railway crossings, had posted the crossing watchman Aldridge across the unoccupied opening. Aldridge’s function was, by virtue of his position and his lights, which he carried in each hand, to preclude any re-occurrences of the illegal crossings. That precaution duly taken, the event that a drunken motorist would thereupon drive his car illegally through the “opening,” thus running over the positioned watchman, was of a kind not previously experienced. “There was ‘no evidence of prior occurrences of the kind here under consideration’ in the record.” Inman, supra, at 141, 80 S.Ct. at 244, quoting Inman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., 108 Ohio App. 124, 131, 161 N.E.2d 60, 66 (1958). Absent any such evidence, the jury was unable as a matter of law to find that the railroad could have reasonably foreseen the motorist’s criminal action. The reasonable foreseeability of the harm, an “essential ingredient” of negligence in an FELA action, is unproved. Gallick, supra, 372 U.S. at 117, 83 S.Ct. at 665.
The unintended effect of the panel’s misapplication of the reasonably foreseeable standard is to render nugatory this “essential ingredient” of negligence. The foreseeability test, as applied by the panel, would adjudge the re-occurrence of an illegal crossing foreseeable even where a “senseless” driver disregarded precautions adopted after the prior occurrences. Because the panel’s foreseeability standard does not focus on the foreseeability of re-occurrence in light of the safety precautions adopted, but rather ignores them, the standard knows no bounds: even if, to borrow Justice Whittaker’s analogy, the watchman were encased in an armored tank, his being struck by a drunken motorist is foreseeable simply because other motorists, presumably sober but impatient, drove across open track absent a watchman blocking their path. Indeed, under the panel’s broad test of foreseeability, the “essential ingredient” can likely be presumed, as a plaintiff can simply point to the fact that an employer had taken a precaution *161against a certain harm to show that he reasonably foresaw that harm re-occurring.
Against the danger of illegal crossings, the railroad interposed a watchman. Against the danger of his being accidentally run over, the railroad gave him lights. Regarding the danger that a drunken driver might ignore both and wilfully run down the watchman, the occurrence was unforeseen. The lonely fact that automobiles had steered around stopped trains and crossed open tracks in the past does not tend to prove that they will do so again in an accelerating automobile in wilful disregard of the value of human life. The issue of negligence should not have gone to the jury.
II.
It is a fundamental rule of law that a plaintiff is entitled only to his provable damages, and no more. Where a plaintiff seeks damages for a value which would have accrued in the future, e.g., lost future wages, and he seeks to acquire that future value presently, then it is a matter of common sense that the future value should be reduced to its present value in order to account for the time value of money. It is this present value which reflects the full damages suffered by the plaintiff, and consequently fully remedies his loss. To permit the plaintiff to acquire a greater value for loss of future wages, above his proved amount, constitutes an unjust enrichment, and should not be sanctioned by law.
It is also a fundamental feature of our legal system that the defendant is not required to produce evidence. The burden of proving injury, negligence, causation, and damages is on the plaintiff, and his failure to do so adequately, even in the absence of any rejoinder by the defendant, entitles the defendant to judgment.
The Supreme Court recently stated that it is “clear” that “a defendant in an FELA case is entitled to have the jury instructed that ‘when future payments or other pecuniary benefits are to be anticipated, the verdict should be made up on the basis of their present value only.’ ” St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company v. Dickerson, 470 U.S. 409, 411, 105 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 84 L.Ed.2d 303 (1985) (per curiam), quoting Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company v. Kelly, 241 U.S. 485, 491, 36 S.Ct. 630, 632, 60 L.Ed. 1117 (1916). In the case presented, the defendant requested during trial an instruction regarding the need to reduce damages to present value, which request the district court found sufficient to preclude a waiver of the issue. Thus, it seems self-evident that the defendant was entitled to a present value instruction. Although the panel opinion agrees with this proposition, it holds that the defendant is not “entitled” to such an instruction unless he has carried his newly imposed burden to lay the necessary evidentiary foundation for the instruction. I believe this imposition has the effect of restricting this entitlement in a manner not sanctioned by the Supreme Court.
Dickerson, supra, involved a case where the plaintiff had presented evidence of his future wage loss. The defendant requested that the judge submit an instruction to the jury to the effect that the jury should reduce the award for lost wages to its present value. It does not appear from the opinion that the defendant produced any evidence on which to base the instruction. The Supreme Court held that, although “no single method for determining present value is mandated by federal law and that the method of calculating present value should take into account inflation and other sources of wage increases as well as the rate of interest, it is equally clear that an utter failure to instruct the jury that present value is the proper measure of a damage award is error.” Id. 470 U.S. at 412, 105 S.Ct. at 1349. The Supreme Court reversed on this failure. Similarly, in Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation v. Pfeifer, 462 U.S. 523, 103 S.Ct. 2541, 76 L.Ed.2d 768 (1983), neither party had offered any expert testimony concerning predicted future rates of inflation, interest rates, or their connection. The Supreme Court stated that, “whatever the rate the District Court may choose to discount the estimated stream of future earnings, it must make a deliberate choice____” Id. at *162552-553, 103 S.Ct. at 2558. Thus the Supreme Court remanded the case to the district court on this issue.
Although the Supreme Court has clearly given lower federal courts latitude in determining by what method they choose to discount awards of future wages to present value, including permitting courts to adopt the “total offset” method, and permitting litigants to stipulate that present value will not be requested, it does not seem that the Supreme Court has ever wavered from its requirement that the defendant is entitled to a present value instruction. The Supreme Court has held steadfastly to its principle that the defendant is entitled to a present value instruction lest the damages be comprised of “ ‘more than compensation if it be made up by aggregating the benefits without taking account of the earning power of the money that is presently to be awarded.’ ” Dickerson 470 U.S. at 412, 105 S.Ct. at 1349, quoting Kelly 241 U.S. at 491, 36 S.Ct. at 632. Where the parties have failed to introduce evidence of the proper measure of present value, and the defendant has been denied his entitlement to an instruction, the Supreme Court has reversed the judgment. Pfeifer.
The principle established by the panel is beguilingly attractive. Clearly a great deal of law can be explained by the proposition that each litigating party should have the burden of proving facts or theories which serve his interest. This principle, however, is but one of many, and must in this instance be considered in light of the less comely, but perhaps better established principle that the plaintiff is entitled to his actual losses, and no more. This latter principle may fail to produce the elegant result, but will serve to respect the prerogative of the defendant to decline to produce evidence, and will furthermore respect the integrity of the judicial system in its difficult task of finding a proper award of damages for loss of future wages. The defendant should not have to carry the burden of laying the evidentiary basis for a present value instruction. I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to say that Judge RUSSELL and Judge WIDENER join this dissent; Judge HALL joins in Part I and Judge ERVIN joins in Part II of the dissent.