Court Opinion

ID: 9459347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:18:14.453323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:07.913283
License: Public Domain

HAYS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting): I dissent.
There was enought evidence to present a jury question on whether the railroad exercised due care to make the employee’s place of employment reasonably safe. As the Supreme Court has pointed out, Congress expressed a strong preference for jury determination of actions arising under the FELA. See, Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Co., 352 U. S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493 (1957). This is especially true when the issue involved is the negligence of the railroad.
“The Congress when adopting the law [FELA] was particularly concerned that the issues whether there was employer fault and whether that fault played any part in the injury or death of the employee should be decided by the jury whenever fair minded men could reach those conclusions on the evidence.” 352 U.S. at 508, 77 S. Ct. at 449.
In the instant case, when the evidence is viewed, as we must view it, in the light most favorable to the appellant, it is clear that a jury could properly find that the employer’s failure to install a peephole in a situation where the danger was great and the corrective action required only a small effort, was negligence and that this negligence played some part in the employee’s death.
The trial court also erred in excluding evidence which tended to establish the defendant’s knowledge of the hazards to which the ticket agent was exposed. The testimony of the union official concerning his conversations with railroad officials tended to establish that the defendant was aware that the steel doors with no peephole presented a safety problem.
“I requested that the steel doors be removed from this station [Mineóla], as well as other stations, and also that a peephole be put in there and a silent alarm to protect the employees, including protection when they open these offices at six and six thirty in the morning.”
The exclusion of evidence of prior holdups at defendant’s ticket offices was also error. In FELA cases, where foreseeability has been an issue as in the instant case, proof of prior accidents has been held admissible. See, Cahill v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co., 236 F.2d 410 (2d Cir. 1956); Plough v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 164 F.2d 254 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 333 U.S. 861, 68 S.Ct. 740, 92 L.Ed. 1140 (1947). The majority holds that these cases do not require admission of the evidence of prior holdups in the instant case, because the holdups did not occur “at the exact locus of the incident giving rise to the litigation.” I do not read these cases so narrowly. I would allow *467the evidence to be admitted since it tended to establish defendant’s knowledge of the hazards to which the ticket agent was exposed.