Court Opinion

ID: 9637965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:28:01.47048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:02.311984
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As a legislative question, I think I would have voted against the enactment of this ordinance. As a judicial question, however, I do not feel able to say that the ordinance can make no contribution to the “safety and welfare of employees” and to “public safety” and so is invalid, or that its contribution to these purposes is so disproportionate to its burden that its application to appellee amounts to a deprivation .of property without due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
On the face of the ordinance and on the evidence in the record, I regard the situation as ruled by the full-crew decisions of the Supreme Court in Chicago, R. I. & Pac. R. Co. v. Arkansas, 219 U.S. 453, 31 S.Ct. 275, 55 L.Ed. 290; St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Arkansas, 240 U.S. 518, 36 S.Ct. 443, 60 L.Ed. 776; and Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Norwood, 283 U.S. 249, 51 S.Ct. 458, 75 L.Ed. 1010. To illustrate, in the Chicago, R. I. & Pac. R. Co. case, an Arkansas statute prohibiting a railroad company from operating a freight train “with a crew consisting of less than an engineer, a fireman, a conductor, and three brakemen, regardless of any modern equipment of automatic couplers and air brakes,” Acts Ark.1907, No. 116, was held not to be unconstitutional as against the railroad company’s attack that “its said train was equipped with automatic couplers and air brakes, so that the cars thereof could be coupled and uncoupled without the necessity of brakemen going between the cars, and could be stopped by the application of the air brakes by the engineer of said train without the intervention or assistance of the conductor or brakeman * * *; that it had employed on said train a conductor and two brakemen, and that the employment of another brakeman on said train was unnecessary, because there were no duties connected with the running and op*654erating of said train to be performed by a third brakeman, and said act, in attempting to require [it] to employ three brakemen on said train, attempted to require [it] to expend a large amount of money for a useless and unnecessary purpose, and to deprive [it] of its property without due process of law.” In the St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. case, another Arkansas statute similarly was held constitutional which provided that “no railroad company or corporation owning or operating any yards or terminals in the cities within this State, where switching, pushing or transferring of cars are made across public crossings within the city limits of the cities, shall operate their switch crew or crews with less than one engineer, a fireman, a foreman and three helpers.” Acts Ark.1913, Act 67.
The switching operations involved in the present case are those of the Duluth Union Depot & Transfer Company, a subsidiary corporation of appellee, but the record contains a stipulation that the matter shall be treated as though the Depot Co. had been made a formal party.
The record shows that the Depot Co. has for many years carried on its switching operations with a steam locomotive, containing an engineer and a fireman, so that the ordinance does not impose any new or greater financial burden on it than it has previously had. The engine, as a convenience in switching, has heretofore been operated across Fifth Avenue West, which lies just east of the depot, but to escape any question with respect to that thoroughfare the Depot Co. now proposes to tailor its operations and to run its engine only west of that Avenue. It is still necessary for it, however, to cross Twentieth Avenue West, another city street located in an industrial district, and in addition “there are numerous paths across the [seven] tracks which are used by licensees as well as trespassers,” as the trial court stated in its memorandum opinion. These paths are scattered throughout the switching yards from the depot to Twentieth Avenue West, and they are used both by the employees of appellee and of other railroads for convenience in crossing and by persons going to and from various industries located south of the switching yards. There are curves in the tracks, around which the train must move as it is being switched, leading into the coach yard and also on the turning wye. The average train pushed or pulled in the switching operations consists of seven to ten passenger coaches or Pullman cars, and the length of such a ten-car train is approximately 700 feet. Duluth, by reason of its geographical location, is subject to heavy rains, to fogs, to snowstorms from October to April, to strong winds and blizzards, and to temperature variations down to 30 degrees below zero.
The evidence further shows that part of the regular duties previously performed by a fireman on the switch engine has been to observe all fixed signals along the tracks, such as those on switches; to repeat them to the engineer, “whether the engineer can see the signals or not”; to keep watch especially of any and all conditions on the left side of the train and tracks; and to relay to the engineer any signals that may be given from the left side of the train. Besides the general traffic at Twentieth Avenue West, the pedestrians crossing the switching yards on the numerous paths, and the constant presence of the two switchmen around the train, it appears that there also are car repairers and car cleaners who have occasion at times to get on and off the cars and for whom a watch must accordingly be kept.
The trial court was of the opinion, as is the majority here, that all of these tasks of observation, cooperation and care on the part of a fireman could just as well be shifted onto the engineer and the switch-men in the Diesel-engine operation. The memorandum opinion of the trial court- observes that “some testimony offered by the defendants would indicate that at times it would be inconvenient to give signals on the [right] hand side,” and also that “it may well be that, under some circumstances and conditions, the evidence presents at least a debatable question as to the necessity of having a 44-ton Diesel manned by two men in order to insure safety to the public and the employees”, but that the engineer could be required to stand up when it was advisable to enlarge his scope of vision, and the switchmen could be directed to cross over the track — necessarily under, over, through, behind or in front of the train — so as to enable them to give all signals on the right hand side, and “if there are any adverse weather conditions such as fog, rain, or snow, and the movements of the Diesel thereby become hazardous, one of the switchmen, in view of *655Jie very limited operations contemplated, could ride in the cab with the engineer.”
But all of this seems to me only to demonstrate the existence of a legislative safety field and creates or countenances, I think, judicial or employer alternatives for legislative judgment and prescription. Where it is necessary in some railroad operation to take special steps to protect public and employee safety, the question of what should be done and how is in my opinion properly a matter for legislative choice,1 subject only to the conditions (1) that the prescription or prohibition made will contribute to the safety-purpose intended or can at least debatably be said to do so, and (2) that its public contribution must not be so disproportionate to its private burden as to amount in practical application to a deprivation of property without due process.
I have heretofore said, and tried to demonstrate, that I do not see how legally it can be claimed that the ordinance involved is incapable of making any contribution to public and employee safety. I believe that the city council could legitimately conclude, therefore, whether its legislative judgment might be wise or unwise, that the presence of a fireman or helper in the engine cab could, under the conditions which I have set out from the record, contribute such observation, cooperation and care in switching operations as would be a sound factor in public and employee safety. This leaves then, as the only remaining question, whether the safety contribution that might be thus made is so disproportionate to the burden of the ordinance as to make it unconstitutional in its application to the operations of the Depot Co.
The Depot Co. has made no showing in the record that entitles or that enables that question to be given any deep consideration. The only evidence that it has introduced which in any way touches on the question is the testimony of one witness that compliance with the ordinance would involve a payment in firemen’s salaries of $4,917.60 annually, and of another witness that the expense would run between $6,000 and $7,-000 a year. The trial court found that obedience to the ordinance would cost the Depot Co. “at least five thousand dollars per year.” But an expense of that amount in railroad operation, where public and employee safety is involved, can hardly soundly be said to be so disproportionate on its face, without further evidence, as to entitle it to be branded as an unconstitutional deprivation of property. One accident avoided could alone make it a wise expenditure. How great is the burden it imposes on the Depot Co. in relation to the possible revenue from its operations, the record does not attempt to disclose. The only other relevant fact that we know in the situation is that it is an expense which the Depot Co. has always heretofore had and paid. The language which the Supreme Court used in relation to the Arkansas full-crew statutes in Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Norwood, 283 U.S. at page 255, 51 S.Ct. at page 461, 75 L.Ed. 1010, is equally applicable here: “While cost of' complying with state laws enacted to promote safety is an element properly to be taken into account in determining whether such laws are arbitrary and repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, * * * there is nothing alleged in that respect which is sufficient to distinguish this case from those in which we have upheld the [full-crew] laws in question.”
The majority opinion and the trial court have both assumed, without deciding, that it is within the power of the city commission of Duluth to enact such a safety ordinance, if it otherwise is valid, and so I shall not discuss that question. I am unable to agree, however, for the reasons which I have given, that we have any right to declare the ordinance unconstitutional, either from its face, or on the evidence in the record, or under the decisions of the Supreme Court, and I therefore respectfully feel compelled to dissent.

 We are not here concerned with any question of conflict between federal and state regulations.