Court Opinion

ID: 9447765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:43:56.45278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:11.109739
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The language of the Boiler Inspection Act, 36 Stat. 913, § 2 (1911), 45 U.S.C.A. § 23, does not suggest to me a Congressional purpose to impose on railroads an absolute duty to keep the surfaces of locomotives and tenders as free from foreign matter at all times, as an operating room before surgery. If the Act does this, I see no way of limiting the requirement to such substances as oil and grease; it must extend also to substances as unavoidable in railroad operation as snow and ice. Such a construction means that railroads face an inevitable conflict between the duty thus imposed, carrying the sanction of a $250 penalty for “each and every such violation,” 45 U.S.C.A. § 34, as well as of liability to employees, and their duty to render reasonable service to passengers and shippers; if the New Haven chose to regard the former as paramount, there would, I fear, be many occasions during the New England winter when we would be bereft of the presence of our colleagues from Connecticut and Vermont. Neither does anything in the legislative history of the Act afford the slightest basis for such a construction ; indeed, it points rather in the opposite direction.1 If I were free to ex*398ercise my own judgment, I should therefore wholly agree with the interpretation given by this Court in Ford v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co., 2 Cir., 1931, 54 F.2d 342, where we affirmed the dismissal of a complaint based on the theory that the mere presence of a foreign substance violated the Safety Appliance and Boiler Inspection Acts.
Against this we now have Lilly v. Grand Trunk Western R. Co., 1943, 317 U.S. 481, 487-488, 63 S.Ct. 347, 87 L.Ed. 411. That opinion seems to me to shift rather uneasily between the extreme position urged by the plaintiff and embodied in the judge’s instruction here, and a narrower holding based on Interstate Commerce Commission Rule 153. If that decision were our own, I would limit it to the latter ground, see Urie v. Thompson, 1949, 337 U.S. 163, 191, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 93 L.Ed. 1282, believing that any incongruity in having the standard of liability differ according as a practice with respect to locomotives and tenders was or was not required by a rule of the Interstate Commerce Commission was less undesirable than having the standard differ as between the locomotive and tender on the one hand and rolling stock covered by the Safety Appliance Act on the other, see Raudenbush v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 3 Cir., 1947, 160 F.2d 363, or as between railroad power plants and those of competitive carriers by land and air who are subject to a liability to their employees that is absolute but limited. However, when the precedent is a decision of the Supreme Court, our handling must be more literal; despite my own belief that the result goes beyond any purpose signified by Congress, I think the interpretive scale comes down slightly on the side that the Lilly opinion went all the way Judge CLARK says. I concur for affirmance solely on that ground; for if the charge with respect to the Boiler Inspection Act was in error, a new trial would be required despite the correctness of the instruction and the adequacy of the evidence under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, United New York and New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Ass’n v. Halecki, 1959, 358 U.S. 613, 619, 79 S.Ct. 517, 3 L.Ed.2d 541.

. The initial debate on the floor of the House indicated that the legislators were primarily concerned with boiler explosions. Representative Mann, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, which reported the bill, said “It is the belief of all people concerned, both the railroads and the employees, that the passage of this bill will materially result in the lessening of boiler explosions.” 46 Cong.Rec. 2071 (1911). Representative Robinson spoke of accidents caused by “defective boilers,” id. at 2072, and Representative Peters of explosions, steam pressure, and the need to inspect boilers from the inside, id. at 2074.
The broadening of the Act in 1915 was recommended by the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce in a one-page *398report, S.Rep., 63rd Cong., 3d Sess., No. 1068, which said only:
“This measure provides for the inspection of the entire locomotive. Experience has shown that this is necessary and desirable for the proper safeguarding of the lives of those who travel and of those engaged in the operation of locomotives.”
The House Report on the 1924 amendment, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 490, reprinted a letter from the Interstate Commerce Commission which spoke in passing of accidents “resulting from the failure of some part of appliance of the locomotive or tender.” P. 3. The Senate Report, No. 740, simply reprinted the House report with approval.