Court Opinion

ID: 9454153
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:37:54.505348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:59.660586
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
Before ALDRICH*, GODBOLD and DYER, Circuit Judges.
ALDRICH, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff appellant’s petition for rehearing, concluding that our opinion may be “accurately characterized” in the language of the court in Page v. St. Louis SW. Ry., 5 Cir., 1965, 349 F.2d 820, 827, as “confusion and a proliferation of metaphysical terms scarcely understandable to the most astute scholar,” essentially repeats the arguments made in his original brief, which is not the intended function of such a petition. However, one argument we possibly dealt with insufficiently, as plaintiff has replied with an unjustifiable, but perhaps superficially plausible contention.
According to plaintiff’s testimony he was told by his foreman that the track was marked with a blue derail and that it would be safe for him to work under the locomotive even though it, itself, did not bear a blue signal. In his original brief plaintiff first inquired how he could be negligent “when he relies upon the representation of his foreman that he is working under safe conditions * * * ?” Later, immediately prior to the claim, which the record totally refutes, that “there was no evidence that the blue signals were available,” plaintiff amplified this by stating, “Surely neither the railroad, or the law, or this Court, would expect the crewmen to challenge the work [sic] of their boss. If one did he would not long be a crewman or employee!” In response, we referred to the testimony that his “foreman had told him that a protective blue-marked derail was on the track,” but stated that so far as protecting him from contributory negligence was concerned, the foreman was merely another employee whose affirmation could be accepted, but did not necessarily free him from negligence as a matter of law.
In his petition for rehearing plaintiff says he was not merely relying upon the foreman’s word, but was following instructions, so that his case is on “all fours” with the case of Paluch v. Erie, L. RR., 3 Cir., 1968, 387 F.2d 996. It is not. In Pahcch the employee was ordered by his foreman to climb a pole. The employee had no reason to know that the pole was unsafe, which, in fact, it was. In the case at bar plaintiff was not ordered to work under the locomotive without a blue signal light; he was merely told that he could. He knew that the rule imposed a personal duty upon him to place a blue signal on the locomotive, although it offered the alternative of a blue derail elsewhere on the track. It must be obvious, however, particularly when plaintiff was going to be there a number of hours, that marking the engine was safer than a derail down the track, admittedly out of sight, and subject to later removal without plaintiff’s knowledge.
As we pointed out, the possibility of someone’s error, even the plaintiff’s, warranted the jury in finding the railroad negligent in spite of the absence of a blue signal on the locomotive. By the same token, the jury could have found that the plaintiff should have anticipated a 'mistake, particularly when it would have been so easy to have protected himself. If plaintiff had been ordered by the foreman not to place a signal on the locomotive, that would have been another matter. The record required no such finding.
The jury concluded that both parties were equally negligent. We believe this was not only justifiable, but entirely reasonable. The petition for rehearing is denied.