Court Opinion

ID: 9474509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:59:39.169763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:08.203774
License: Public Domain

CAMPBELL, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I would affirm the district court.
While my colleagues’ reading of the OSHA safety regulation pertaining to jacks is one possible construction, the district court’s reading was also reasonable. Facially it is not clear whether 29 C.F.R. §§ 1910.241(d)(1) and 1910.244(a) were meant to apply to a device of the type plaintiff was using when injured. I believe that before we take the draconian step of removing from the jury the issues of negligence and contributory negligence due to *269an alleged OSHA violation, we should at' least require that a clear cut violation of the OSHA statute be made out.
Ordinarily, perhaps, if a regulation is ambiguous, it may be viewed as raising a question of law upon which an appellate court should have the final say. But the construction of OSHA regulations is peculiarly the province of the Secretary of Labor who promulgates them. See Donovan v. A. Amorello & Sons, Inc., 761 F.2d 61 (1st Cir.1985). Where the OSHA regulation is ambiguous, it is difficult for an employer to know that it is even violating the regulation (and hence the OSHA statute) until and unless the Secretary construes the regulation as applying. Since we do not have an administrative interpretation that this ambiguous “jack” regulation covered the device in question, I think we should not regard the regulation as applicable for purposes of this case.1 At the very least, we should accept the narrower construction of the district judge, that construction being perfectly reasonable.
OSHA contemplates that regulations adopted by the Secretary of Labor will be enforced, clarified, and interpreted by the Secretary in the course of OSHA administrative proceedings. The Secretary decides in the first instance whether or not he thinks a regulation covers a particular industrial situation, and issues citations for violations only if he believes it does. In practice, the Secretary may mitigate or defer penalties if he feels the wording of the regulation was so unclear as not to put the employer on fair notice in the first instance. And the expertise and interpretation of the Secretary are matters to which any reviewing court must give substantial deference where, as here, the regulation is unclear on its face. See Donovan v. A. Amorello & Sons, Inc., 761 F.2d 61.
Both this court and the defendant carrier lacked an administrative interpretation by the Secretary of Labor in the present case. In these circumstances, how can we know for sure that the carrier was actually in violation of a safety statute, i.e., of OSHA? We are not dealing with a legislative enactment which a court is best equipped to construe; this is a regulation written by the Secretary of Labor for enforcement in a unique administrative context. Only the Secretary is empowered to determine its applicability in the first instance. Where the Secretary has, in effect, primary jurisdiction to interpret the regulation and has not done so, I do not think this court should undertake its own interpretation unless the regulation is so clear on its face as to make it possible to say, without hesitancy, that the Secretary would treat the conduct in question as a violation of the OSHA statute.
The majority’s finding that defendants violated the ambiguous jack regulation operates against the defendant railroad in two respects. First, because violation of a statutory standard results in a finding of negligence per se, it removes the issue of negligence from the jury. In addition, it removes from the jury the issue of contributory negligence, since 45 U.S.C. § 53 bars the reduction of damages on account of contributory negligence where a common carrier has violated “any statute enacted for the safety of employees”. For practical purposes, of course, the finding of negligence per se has little effect in the instant case. At trial, plaintiff was able to convince the jury of defendant’s negligence without the benefit of evidence of the OSHA regulation. The bar on contributory negligence, on the other hand, has a much more significant impact, for the jury found plaintiff to be 80 percent contributorily negligent, and the district court reduced plaintiff’s damage recovery proportionately. By finding that the defendant violated the ambiguous jack regulation, this court *270permits the plaintiff to recover in full despite his proven negligence.
The advantage of the district court’s narrow, strict construction of the jack regulation is that it avoids laying a special penalty on the railroad in a hazy situation where, ex ante, it could not have known for certain it was violating anything. It scarcely seems unjust to let stand a judgment that, as in most FELA cases and tort cases generally, reduces a plaintiff’s recovery for the proportion of damages attributable to his own negligence. The plaintiff had his day in court and came away with a considered judgment of a jury of his peers. This court strips the railroad of a customary defense in mitigation of damages — contributory negligence — by construing against it an ambiguous regulation over which the Secretary of Labor, who has not spoken, has primary jurisdiction. I do not think that Congress, when it enacted 45 U.S.C. § 53, intended to remove the consequences of a plaintiff’s own contributory negligence in such slippery circumstances,2 nor do I think we should put the taxpayers and the defendant to the expense of a second trial where the district court’s reading of the ambiguous regulation was, though not the only possible reading, a perfectly reasonable and defensible one.

. I know of no way to secure an advisory opinion from the Secretary of Labor. It is too late in the day to do so, anyway. We review the record made in the district court and that court was not presented with any evidence showing the Secretary or his agents had construed the regulation as applicable here.

. It should be borne in mind that there are innumerable OSHA regulations, some of them highly technical and relating to very specialized trades and industries, where the Secretary’s own expertise is an important factor in determining their meaning and scope. See, e.g., GAF Corp. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Comm'n, 561 F.2d 913, 920-21 (D.C.Cir.1977) (MacKinnon, J., concurring). If an OSHA regulation were clear on its face, I might agree with my colleagues' analysis that it could be the basis for finding the violation of a safety regulation for purposes of 45 U.S.C. § 53. My concern here relates to an ambiguous regulation which may or may not apply. In such a situation, I think railroad employees are adequately protected in a jury trial applying the normal principles of negligence law.