Court Opinion

ID: 9638220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:37:55.219796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:04.836072
License: Public Domain

CHASE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My only disagreement with the majority ts in the conclusion that the record shows at least that the defendant was prima facie negligent in respect to the installation and maintenance of the switch. The failure of the plaintiff, as I see it, to prove the defendant negligent makes the judgment right and makes harmless any error which may have been committed in respect to the evidence.
We must give effect to the fact that no compensation act covers such an injury as the plaintiff’s intestate received and that the defendant has not yet been made an insurer of any kind as to such accidents. The sole basis of its liability, if there is any, must be its negligence which caused the injury. No one disputes that.
So what was the defendant’s negligence ? It is said to have been in permitting a new switch, which the deceased was hired to throw in the course of his work, to operate so hard he could not take hold of the handle and throw it as such switches ordinarily are thrown. It should not be forgotten that he was not required to pull any harder on the handle than he saw fit and that after he had tried and failed he was at liberty simply to report that fact to Edman as he did. There was no emergency and no duty on the part of Stewart but to try as best he could without injury to himself. The work of a railroad brakeman is, of course, strenuous and men who follow it must at times exert themselves harder than at others and will, it is reasonably probable, sometimes try to move something they cannot budge. That is all in the day’s work and the elimination as one of the possible defenses to an action for negligence of what has been called the assumption of risk doctrine does not, or so it would seem, change in the slightest the burden still resting upon a plaintiff to prove the defendant negligent. See concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U.S. 54, 68, 63 S.Ct. 444, 87 L.Ed. -. It is not the equivalent of establishing a new cause of action. Liability is still based solely on negligence which still is what it was before and the likelihood of injury was so negligible that the railroad did not fail in any legal duty it owed the deceased when it merely let him try as he would to throw this switch.
It may be good policy to enact laws which will make the industry hear the pecuniary loss of such accidents as this, but until then and while tort liability alone is relied on, I cannot believe that juries ought to be allowed to decide how easy a new railroad switch should turn. That will certainly create differing standards; perhaps as many as there may be juries to decide; and such standards on the same railroad will vary from jury to jury. It will supplant the judgment of railroad engineers based upon training and experience in actual railroad operation with that of the collective notion untrained and inexperienced jurors may get from the evidence weighed in the light of their own ideas on the subject and will, I *531think, be contrary to what is now the prevailing law. Delaware, etc., R. R. v. Koske, 279 U.S. 7, 11, 49 S.Ct. 202, 73 L.Ed. 578; Toledo, St. L. & W. R. Co. v. Allen, 276 U.S. 165, 170, 48 S.Ct. 215, 72 L.Ed. 513.
That the deceased was under no compulsion, contractual or otherwise, to overexert himself on this switch or that the defendant should reasonably have foreseen that he, or anyone else, would do so and be hurt seems clear beyond fair debate from the following evidence of Edman which was relied on by the plaintiff, and not controverted by the defendant, to show the condition of the switch so soon after the deceased tried in vain to turn it that its condition had not been changed meanwhile. Edman testified as to that as follows:
“Q. Well, he did get on this engine and then what happened? A. He got up on the engine and he rode up with me to the switch and I went down and throwed the switch myself.
“Q. You say you went down and threw the switch. A. Yes.
“Q. How did you throw it ? A. Throwed it with my hands.
“Q. Did you have anything in your hands to throw the switch with? A. Yes, I did, I had a little bar standing down there, been there for some time, I don’t know what they used it for, I would grab hold of that, it was a little hard to throw the switch that day and I put a little bar on it and throwed the switch without no trouble.
“Q. What kind of a bar was that you throwed it with? A. Well, a piece of iron about two feet long.
“Q. What was it used for ordinarily? A. I don’t know, it was old scrap iron, somebody left it there.
“Q. But you used this iron bar to throw the switch; is that right? A. Yes, that is right.
“Q. You say you found it a little hard to throw? A. Yes.
“Q. It that right ? A. I thought I would use the bar to make it easier for myself.
“Q. How long had you been using the bar to throw that particular switch? A. I don’t remember how many times.
“Q. You had thrown it before, had you not ? A. I had thrown it all the time.
“Q. How long had that switch been there? A. I couldn’t remember, not very long, it was a brand new switch.
“Q. Well, would you say it was there a week? A. Possibly, maybe more, I don’t know, I couldn’t remember, I never keep no track of switches.
“Q. But you found that you needed to use this iron bar in order to throw it, didn’t you? A. Why, yes, I used that little bar, used it once or twice— * * *
“Q. You mean you didn’t have to use the bar for another switch? A. Yes.
“Q. And you didn’t use it for throwing any other switch; it that right ? A. No.
“Q. Wasn’t it an iron shaker bar you used to throw this switch with? A. Might have been, might have been an old one broken off about 2 or 3 feet long, I couldn’t just — kind of flat, about an inch and a half wide, about an inch and a half thick.”
Because it seems to me that fair jurors could not reasonably decide on this evidence that the defendant was negligent, I think the trial judge was clearly right in deciding that issue as a matter of law. Gunning v. Cooley, 281 U.S. 90, 50 S.Ct. 231, 74 L.Ed. 720.