Court Opinion

ID: 9484016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:38:17.958058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:58.233435
License: Public Domain

ROTH, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority’s holding in Parts II A and B that under certain conditions claims for negligent infliction of emotional distress are cognizable under FELA. However, I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s determination that the plaintiff here has a valid claim against Conrail for such an injury. In order to describe the reasons for which I come to this conclusion, I first look back to another rail line, the Long Island Railroad Company, and the unfortunate injury, which occurred to Helen Palsgraf as she waited in the station for the train to Rockaway beach.
Plaintiff was standing on a platform of defendant’s railroad after buying a ticket to go to Rockaway beach. A train stopped at the station, bound for another place. Two men ran forward to catch it. One of the men reached the platform of the car without mishap, though the train was already moving. The other man, carrying a package, jumped aboard the car, but seemed unsteady as if about to fall. A guard on the car, who had held the door open, reached forward to help him in, and another guard on the platform pushed him from behind. In this act, the package was dislodged, and fell upon the rails. It was a package of small size, about fifteen inches long, and was covered by a newspaper. In fact, it contained fireworks, but there was nothing in its appearance to give notice of its contents. The fireworks when they fell exploded. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at the other end of the platform many feet away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing injuries for which she sues.
Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y.1928).
To illustrate why I equate the present case with Palsgraf, I will begin with an account of the events surrounding the death of Richard Johns as he worked on the Conrail tracks in August 1988. In reviewing these events, we must keep in mind that it is not the family of Richard Johns who seek legal redress in this action. It is Johns’ friend, James Gottshall, who makes the claim, based on his reaction to Johns’ death. Analyzing this case in respect to Palsgraf, I see James Gottshall in the place of Helen Palsgraf and Richard Johns in the place of the man who carried the package of fire works.
It is not easy to ignore pain and suffering when considering whether a plaintiff can assert a cognizable legal claim to recover for injury. However, lying beneath the distress invoked by the factual account of Richard Johns’ death is the structure of the applicable legal precedents. The question of the propriety of legal recovery for an injury may sometimes be better explored if that factual account is made concisely.
Even though his description of the events leading up to Helen Palsgraf’s injury is sparing, Justice Cardozo sets forth the facts necessary to ascertain the scope of liability. Cardozo found no liability on the part of the Long Island Railroad to Mrs. Palsgraf because “[t]he conduct of the defendant’s guard, if a wrong in its relation to the holder of the package, was not a wrong in its relation to the plaintiff, standing far away.” Id. In effect, Cardozo found that the Long Island Railroad had no duty to protect Mrs. Palsgraf from the harm caused by the exploding fireworks because it was not reasonably foreseeable that such an injury would occur. For this reason, Cardozo concluded, the railroad had no duty to prevent or avert the injury to Helen Palsgraf.
Similarly in the case before us, I find no liability on the part of Conrail to James Gottshall because any duty Conrail may have violated would have been a duty to Richard Johns; the impact on James Gotts-hall of any negligence on the part of Con*384rail could not have been reasonably foreseeable to Conrail.
Concisely, these are the facts of this ease: On an exceedingly hot day in August 1988, a Conrail work gang of nine men, including James Gottshall and Richard Johns, was replacing defective track along a remote stretch of rail line. Gottshall and Johns were friends. About two and a half hours after the gang began working, Richard Johns collapsed. Michael Norvick, the gang supervisor, was unable to radio for assistance because, without notifying the work gang, Conrail had taken the communications base station off the air for repairs. Norvick then drove out from the work site and placed an emergency call for assistance. During this interval, Gottshall attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Johns. His efforts were in vain. By the time the paramedics arrived, Richard Johns had died. The paramedics instructed Norvick to leave Johns’ body where it was until the coroner arrived. The body was covered, and Norvick ordered the men to resume work. After the coroner arrived and conducted his investigation, he reported that Johns had died from a heart attack, precipitated by the excessive heat and humidity, combined with the heavy physical exertion. The coroner also stated that Johns’ chances of survival would have been significantly enhanced if he had received more prompt medical attention.
After Johns’ death, Gottshall returned to work for several days under the same weather conditions. He then told his supervisor that he couldn’t take it anymore, the heat and exhaustion. He returned home and secluded himself in his basement. He subsequently spent three weeks in a psychiatric institute. After his discharge, he continued to receive outpatient psychological therapy.
Gottshall brought suit under FELA, alleging that Conrail’s negligence created the circumstances under which he was forced to watch and participate in the events surrounding the death of his friend. However, in reviewing Gottshall’s claim, it is difficult to determine exactly what he contends was negligent conduct on the part of Conrail. In his brief, Gottshall describes the negligent acts which he alleges converged to cause his injury. These are comprised of Conrail’s: 1) pushing Gottshall and the other members in his crew relentlessly in the midst of a scorching heat wave; 2) failing to provide adequate scheduled work-breaks; 3) discouraging unscheduled work-breaks; 4) canceling a planned course on cardiopulmonary resuscitation; 5) scheduling the men to work under these conditions in remote job locations; and 6) knocking out the radio relay that provided Gottshall and his co-workers with their only access to emergency communications. Brief of Plaintiff-Appellant James Gottshall, p. 35.1
Gottshall’s counsel was questioned at oral argument about the negligent nature of these acts. In response, he spoke of the combination and convergence of events which created the negligence and caused Gottshall’s injury. However, if we examine these claims individually, these allegations consist for the most part of the negotiated circumstances of the duties of this work crew. Moreover, Gottshall is not prepared to designate particular ones of these allegations as negligent acts in and of themselves. He is not arguing that his working conditions were negligently established by Conrail and the union. Indeed, such a claim would not succeed. This court held in Holliday v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 914 F.2d 421, 424 (3d Cir.1990) that we will not upset the working rules and working conditions of rail workers’ jobs, as structured by management and as monitored by the union. To do so would upset the delicate balance of the collective bargaining agreement absent a more compelling reason. Id.
*385However, to escape our holding in Holli-day, Gottshall contends that it is more than the individual factors of the working conditions which comprise Conrail’s negligence; it is the combination of occurrences which created the negligence on Conrail’s part:
Importantly, Gottshall does not assert that defendant was negligent simply because it required Gottshall’s crew to work hard in hot weather, or because defendant had cancelled its CPR course, or merely because of any of the other individual aspects of defendant’s negligence. Gottshall claims that defendant’s negligence lay in its allowing all of these condiditons [sic] to converge at once; that is why this ease is atypical and does not involve a worker’s disatisfaction [sic] with general working conditions.
Brief of Plaintiff-Appellant James E. Gottshall, p. 35, n. 14.
Plaintiff has acknowledged that Conrail was not negligent on the sole basis that it sent out the work gang that day or that it sent out the particular men who made up the gang. As to the conditions at the work site, water, shade, and the opportunity to take individual breaks were available there. Moreover, railroad workers inevitably have to work on the rail lines in remote places. This factor is a part of regular working conditions. In regard to cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Conrail made a conscious decision not to provide such training to its workers because of potential liability problems. Plaintiff has not demonstrated that that decision was erroneous or negligently made. In other words, outside of the interruption of the communications link, the allegedly negligent conditions creáted by Conrail at the time of Johns’ collapse consisted in fact of the members of the work gang performing the negotiated duties of their jobs under conditions which may indeed have been difficult but which had occurred in the past and will probably occur again in the future.
From this analysis of Gottshall’s claims, I arrive at the determination that the only act that plaintiff specifies as being negligent in and of itself is Conrail’s taking the base station off the air for repairs without providing alternate means of communication to the work gang. While Conrail might reasonably foresee that this break in communications could prevent a call to obtain critical medical attention for a sick or injured worker, I cannot conclude that Conrail should be expected reasonably to foresee James Gottshall’s reaction to the death of Richard Johns. Nor can I conclude that Conrail reasonably could foresee how the conditions of the work gang’s negotiated work duties and work environment, conditions which individually under our holding in Holliday would not support FELA recovery, would converge and, all together, create liability. If none of the parts alone were negligently established, it cannot be foreseeable to a reasonable employer that those parts, or any one or more of them, could combine to create liability through newly combined circumstances.
It is because of this lack of foreseeability that I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that James Gottshall’s claim falls within the contours of liability for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Under the precedents of this court, reasonable foreseeability is required to establish liability under FELA. In Holliday v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 914 F.2d 421 (3d Cir.1990), we affirmed the entry of summary judgment in defendant’s favor on the basis that the case involved nothing more than a situation in which the stresses of the job over a very short period were too much for plaintiff. Id. at 425. In other words, it was not foreseeable in a short period of time that these stresses might be injurious to Robert Holliday.2 Similarly, in Outten v. National R.R. Passenger Corp., 928 F.2d 74 (3d Cir.1991), we specifically held that plaintiff could not recover because his emotional reaction to an accident which occurred at a distance from him was not reasonably foreseeable.
*386[I]t is hardly foreseeable to the railroad that one of its employees might suffer serious psychological injuries as a result of the fear of injury from a train collision over a mile away. There is a “perceived unfairness of imposing heavy and disproportionate financial burdens upon a defendant, whose conduct was only negligent, for consequences which appear remote from the 'wrongful’ act.” 3
Id. at 79 (quoting Prosser and Keeton on Torts 361 (5th ed. 1984)). Accord Stoklosa v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 864 F.2d 425 (6th Cir.1988) (plaintiff’s extreme reaction to his demotion could not reasonably have been foreseen by the railroad).
In my opinion Conrail could not reasonably have foreseen that its negligence in interrupting the work gang’s communication link might cause James Gottshall’s severe emotional reaction to the death of Richard Johns, nor could Conrail reasonably have foreseen that individual conditions of work performance, which in themselves were not negligently instituted, might converge to create overall a situation of negligence on the part of Conrail. For these reasons, I conclude that this case does not fall within the contours of liability for negligent infliction of emotional distress as those contours have been drawn by this court. Therefore, I would affirm the district court’s granting of summary judgment.
Present: SLOVITER, Chief Judge, BECKER, STAPLETON, MANSMANN, GREENBURG, HUTCHINSON, SCIRICA, COWEN, NYGAARD, ALITO, ROTH, and LEWIS, Circuit Judges.
SUR PETITION FOR REHEARING
The petition for rehearing field by appel-lee Consolidated Rail Corporation in the above-entitled case having been submitted to the judges who participated in the decision of this court and to all the other available circuit judges of the circuit in regular active service, and no judge who concurred in the decision having asked for rehearing, and a majority of the circuit judges of the circuit in regular active service not having voted for rehearing by the court in banc, the petition for rehearing is denied. Judge Greenberg and Judge Hutchinson would grant rehearing in banc. Judge Roth would grant rehearing for the reasons set forth in her dissent.

. Elsewhere in his brief, Gottshall notes other incidents, such as Norvick driving out to call for help without taking Johns with him and Nor-vick covering the body and leaving it in place until the coroner arrived in accordance with the instructions of the paramedics. These instances are not cited as negligent acts in the brief but apparently as exacerbations. Since I cannot conclude that these examples violated any duty on Conrail’s part, I do not include them in the cited list of negligent acts, taken from Gotts-hall’s brief.

. We noted in Holliday that we were not being “called upon to decide whether an employee exposed to dangerous conditions for a protracted time, though not in an accident, could recover.” Id. at 427. That case has not yet been decided by this court. However, when it arrives, foreseeability under those circumstances might not be an obstacle to recovery.

. While the "remoteness” in Outten was physical, I find an similar "remoteness” in the present case in the relationship between the break in the communications link and the later ensuing reaction of James Gottshall to the death of Richard Johns. Remoteness is a concept that can be equally well characterized in distance, time, or ultimate consequences.