Court Opinion

ID: 9644109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:48:08.470323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:08.688935
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not believe that the language of the Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq., permits of the exception or limitation which the majority opinion adopts — that “a servant’s disregard of a specific order or of a standing rule promulgated for his safety bars recovery, though the injury of the employee was due as well to the negligence of other employees of the railway company,”
The Act provides, 45 U.S.C.A. §§ 51, 53, that “Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in [interstate] commerce * * * shall be liable in damages * * * for * * * injury or death [of an employee] resulting in whole or in part from *1009the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment”, and “In all actions * * * the fact that the employee may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery, but the damages shall be diminished by the jury in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to such employee: Provided, That no such employee who may be injured or killed shall be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence in any case where the violation by such common carrier of any statute enacted for the safety of employees contributed to the injury or death of such employee.”
This language seems to me clear and absolute. Where any negligence on the part of a railroad company is a factor in causing injury or death to an employee in interstate commerce, the railroad company. is liable. Contributory negligence of the employee does not bar a recovery, but it merely operates to reduce the liability of the railroad company in proportion to its causal amount. But, if a violation by the railroad company of some safety statute enacted for the protection of employees is a factor in causing the accident, the, railroad company cannot avail itself of the contributory negligence of the employee for any purpose. That is as far as the, two quoted sections of the Act go. What the majority opinion in effect does, it seems to me, is to add to them, as a counterpart to the legislative proviso that no contributory negligence of the employee will be recognized where the railroad company’s violation of a statute enacted for the safety of employees is in any way a causal factor, a judicial proviso that similarly no negligence of the railroad company will be recognized where the employee’s violation of a company rule or specific order is in any way a causal factor. That, I think, is judicial legislation.
I recognize that there are cases in other Circuits that support the majority’s view, the two most direct authorities being Paster v. Pennsylvania R. R., 2 Cir., 43 F.2d 908, and Van Derveer v. Delaware, L. & W. R. Co., 2 Cir., 84 F.2d 979. In both these cases the opinion was written by Judge Learned Hand, for whose judicial talent I have the greatest respect and admiration. Judge Hand seems to think that the exception to an employee’s right to recover for negligence of the railroad company, if he has violated a rule or order, was given birth in Frese v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., 263 U.S. 1, 44 S.Ct. 1, 68 L.Ed. 131. See 84 F.2d at page 981. I do not believe that the opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes in the Frpse case may be that broadly read. It seems to me that it goes no further legally than to hold that in the situation of that case the negligence of the employee, involving a failure to perform a duty imposed upon him by the statutes of Illinois, was so clearly the immediate cause of the accident, and the existence, of any causative negligence on the part of any other employee of the railroad company was so speculative, that it was proper to deny a recovery for the employee’s death.
Davis v. Kennedy, 266 U.S. 147, 45 S. Ct. 33, 69 L.Ed. 212, Unadilla Valley R. Co. v. Caldine, 278 U.S. 139, 49 S.Ct. 91, 73 L.Ed. 224, and Southern R. Co. v. Youngblood, 286 U.S. 313, 52 S.Ct. 518, 520, 76 L.Ed. 1124 seem to me equally to hold, not that any negligence of the railroad company would not be recognized as a basis for recovery where the employee had violated a rule or order, but that in each of the particular situations involved no causative negligence on the part of the railroad company could reasonably be regarded as having existed, and the employee’s disobeyal of the rule or order was — in the language of the Southern R. Co. case — “the sole efficient cause” of the accident. That this is the correct view of these cases is, I think, confirmed by Rocco v. Lehigh Valley R. Co., 288 U.S. 275, 53 S. Ct. 343, 77 L.Ed. 743. In that case, the employee’s infraction of a rule was held not to bar a recovery and a judgment dismissing the action was reversed, on the ground that the evidence would entitle the jury to find that the accident “was in part due to the negligence of the [railroad company’s other] servants” and that the plain*1010tiff’s infraction was merely “a concurrent cause”. 288 U.S. at page 280, 53 S.Ct. at page 345.
But, even if it were proper for the courts to' add the discussed exception to the Act, that an employee who has violated a safety rule or specific order cannot recover for any concurrent negligence of the railroad company that has been a factor in causing the accident, I do not believe that such an exception would automatically cover also the heeding of warnings of danger after an employee has been put in a position of peril. That seems to me to be adding further length to Judge Hand’s doubtable exception. Conduct, when one suddenly is made aware of existing danger to himself, has no yes-or-no boundary' line, such as the obeying or disobeying of rules or orders may perhaps be argued to have, and the law cannot give it'any. The only test of responsibility that it is at all possible to apply in such a situation is the general traditional stándard of how the ordinary person would act under similar circumstances. That inescapably in such a situation is a question for the jury. It seems to me therefore that there could not possibly be any error in refusing to give the absolute instruction requested by the railroad company in this case : that, “if .you find that brakeman Kavanagh gave timely warning to the plaintiff that there was not sufficient clearance to permit a man to ride a car past the car spotted on the team track, then your verdict must be for the defendant.” The majority reverses the judgment here because of the trial court’s failure to give this instruction.
As a foundation for its holding that the failure to give the requested instruction was error, I think the majority has made a further invasion of the function of th.e jury, by declaring that “if Arnold [plaintiff] received timely warning of the want of sufficient clearance he could easily have avoided his injury.” I am not certain just what the requested instruction or the majority opinion intended the jury to understand, or just what the jury would, have understood, by “timely warning”. (Indeed, it would seem that the ambiguity of the term would 'alone make it impossible to hold that reversible error could exist in refusing .to give the tendered instruction). But assuming for present purposes that timely warning meant, and would be understood by a jury as meaning, warning within such time as would adequately have enabled the employee to protect himself from injury, I still do not see how it could be declared that, if Arnold received such a timely warning, he was absolutely bound, as a matter of law, in the present situation, to have avoided his injury.
Under the evidence, it would appear that Arnold had three possible courses of action open 'to him. He might have jumped off the moving car; he might have tried to crawl up the side of the car to the top of it; or he might have undertaken to swing himself around from the side of the car to the front of it (which was what he was doing when the accident occurred and caught his hand). Kavanagh, as a witness for the railroad company, testified that the car at the time was moving 4 to 5 miles an hour. Arnold testified that it was moving 7 to 10. Kavanagh further said that, at the time he warned Arnold of the danger, Arnold was about half-a-car length from the point where the accident occurred. The cars involved were shown to be about 40 feet in length. At the time of Kavan-agh’s claimed warning, therefore, Arnold was only 20 feet from the point of impact,, traveling forward at a speed of from 4 to 10 miles an hour.. By arithmetical calculation, at 4 miles per hour, he had less than 3Y2 seconds in which to grasp the warning and save himself from injury. At 10 miles per hour, he had less than 2 seconds. It. does not seem to me that anything further is necessary to demonstrate that it was, and could only be, for the jury to say what he was required to do and whether he could thereby have avoided the injury.
To summarize, I believe that no judicial exception to the’Federal Employers’ Liability Act is warranted to deny an employee’s right to recover for negligence of the railroad. company merely because his violation of a rule or order has been a factor in producing his injury; that in order to deny him the right to recover under the Act, his violation of the rule or order (or his other negligence) must have been the sole proximate cause of the accident.; that, *1011even if the exception referred to were proper under the provisions of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, it cannot legitimately be held to cover equally the heeding of warnings of danger given after an employee has been put in a position of peril by the railroad company’s negligence; that there was therefore no error in refusing to instruct the jury that in this case, if “timely warning” of the danger was given, the jury was required to return a verdict for the railroad company; and finally, that to declare as a matter of law on the evidence in the record that if the employee “received timely warning of the want of sufficient clearance he could easily have avoided his injury” is a still further invasion of the functions of the jury under the Act.
For these reasons, I feel obliged to dissent.