Court Opinion

ID: 9418455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:26:00.512009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:47.074549
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Clarke,
with whom concurred Mr. Justice Day, dissenting.
Because I think that the court’s decision of this case will result in seriously confusing the law applicable to the Safety Appliance Acts of Congress, I shall state, as briefly as I may, my reasons for dissenting from it.
When Lang, a brakeman in the employ of the New York Central Railroad Company, received his fatal injuries the Safety Appliance Acts of Congress declared it to "be “unlawful ” for an interstate carrier by rail to “use ón its line” any car not equipped with automatic couplers, and also *462provided that any employee injured by any car not so equipped should not be held to have assumed the risk of injury thereby occasioned by continuing to work "after the unlawful use of such a car had been brought to his knowledge (27 Stat. 531, §§ 2 and 8; 32 Stat. 943, § 1).
At that time also the Federal Employers’ Liability Act provided that in any action brought under the act no employee should be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence or to have assumed the risks of his employment in any case where the violation by the carrier of any statute enacted for the safety of its employees contributed to the injury or death of such employee. (35 Stat. 65, §§ 3 and 4.)
It is obvious that these statutes take out of this case all question as to assumption of risk by, and contributory negligence of, the deceased brakeman.
Since the decision in St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Ry. Co. v. Taylor, 210 U. S. 281, 295, this court has consistently held that in enacting the Safety Appliance Acts: “ The obvious purpose of the legislature was to supplant the qualified duty of the common law with an absolute duty deemed by it more just. If the railroad does, in point of fact, use cars which do not comply with the standard, it violates the plain prohibitions of the law, and there arises from that violation the liability to make compensation to one who is injured by it.”,
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Ry. Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 559. Here the court declares that the Safety Appliance Act imposes “An absolute duty on the carrier and the penalty cannot be escaped by exercise of reasonable care.”
Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33. Here the court said: “Disregard of the Safety Appliance Act is a .wrongful act; and, where it results in damage to one of the class for whose especial benefit it was enacted, the right to recover the damages from the party in default is implied.”
*463Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Layton, 243 U. S. 617, 621. Here the foregoing cases are cited, and the court declares: “While it is undoubtedly true that the immediate occasion for passing the laws requiring automatic couplers was the great number of deaths and injuries caused to employees who were obliged to go between cars to couple and uncouple them, yet these laws as written are by no means confined in their terms to the protection of employees only when so engaged. The language of the acts and the authorities we have cited make it entirely clear that the liability in damages to employees for failure to comply with the law springs from its being made unlawful to me cars, not equipped as required, — not from the position the employee may be in or the work which he may be doing at the moment when he is injured. This effect can be given to the acts and their wise and humane purpose can be accomplished only by holding, as we do, that carriers are liable to employees in damages whenever the failure to obey these safety appliance laws is the proximate came of injury to them when engaged in the discharge of duty.”
Minneapolis & St. Louis R. R. Co. v. Gotschall, 244 U. S. 66. Here a brakeman, going over the . tops of cars when a train was in motion, was thrown under the wheels, by a sudden jerk caused by the setting of brakes when defective couplers parted, and the company was held liable “in view of the positive duty imposed by the statute . . . to furnish safe appliances for the coupling of cars.’’
Regarding the case at bar as ruled, by the decisions we have cited, especially by Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Layton, supra, the trial court held the railroad company liable and sent the case to the jury for the assessment of damages only. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment but the Court of Appeals reversed it solely upon the authority of St. Louis & San Francisco R. R. Co. v. Conarty, 238 U. S. 243.
*464It is plain that the principle of the cases quoted from is that carriers should be held hable.'to employees in damages whenever failure to.obey the Safety Appliance Laws is the. proximate cause of the injury to them when engaged in the discharge of their duty.
With these statutes and decisions in mind, we. come to the consideration of the facts in this case.
Lang, a brakeman, was a member of the crew of a local freight train, running from Erie, Pennsylvania, easterly to Buffalo, New York. When the train reached Silver Creek, an intermediate station, the conductor was directed to pick up a car then on the “house track,” and to take it in hjs train to Farnham, New York. We shah refer to this car as the “Farnham car.”
For more than two weeks prior to the accident to Lang, there had been in the Silver Creek yard a box car loaded with steel, from one end of which, for three or four days before the accident certainly, (how much longer does not appear), the entire coupler and draw bar had been missing. This car had been held for unloading, which had been commenced before but was completed on the day of the accident. It had been necessary during this time to switch the car about the yard, and the crew of which Lang was a member had shifted it at least once on the day before the accident.
When the conductor went to look for the Farnham car he found it standing on the “house track” with five other cars to the west of it and four cars to the east of it, the car next it on the east being the defective car, with the draw head missing from its west end (the end next the Farnham car). Thus this “house track,” with capacity for twelve cars, had ten standing upon it, of which the deféctive car was one — necessarily they must have been very close together.
The conductor saw that it was impossible to switch out the Farnham car from the east end of the “house track” *465without moving the defective car, and thereupon he ordered his engine to go through the switch at the west end of the “house track,” to couple to the six cars standing to me west óf the defective car, and then to back out and switch the Faxriham car (which would be the most easterly one of the string) onto another track where it could be picked up latey; This being done, the two cars farthest from the engine were shunted onto a third track, thus leaving but three cars attached to the engine. The plan then was to “kick” these three cars back onto the “house track” and to stop them when near to the defective car but before they came in contact with it. It was while attempting to accomplish this purpose that the accident occurred.
The movement' which resulted m the accident is described by the conductor, who was standing at the switch at the west end of the “house track, ” as follows:
The engine kicked the three remaining cars onto the “house track” and after they were started Lang, who was standing near the conductor, got on the head car, “the one nearest to the cripple,” for the purpose of stopping them. When he got upon this box car, it was about four car lengths from the defective end of the defective car, and the track was slightly down grade toward it. His purpose was to get to the brake at the head end of the head car so as to stop the three before they touched the defective car, but, either because the cars had been started too rapidly by the engine, or because the brake did not work well, or because the track was down grade, or because the time or distance was too short, he did not get the cars stopped in time to prevent them from colliding with the defective car. At the moment of the impact, Lang, who was in the act of setting the brakes, bad one foot on the brake step attached to the end of the head car, and, because the draw head was missing from the defective car, the ends of the two cars came together, so crushing his leg between them that he died *466within a few days thereafter. Thus did Lang, who was as much without fault in fact as the statutes cited rendered him without fault in law, come to his death.
It is the uncontradicted evidence that if the bad order car had been equipped with such a coupler as the law required the erids of the two cars could not have come nearer together than thirty inches and the accident, of course, could not have occurred.
It seems to be the theory of the opinion of the court that, because the conductor realized the danger there was .in the defective car and aimed to avoid moving it, therefore it was not “in use” by the company within the meaning the Safety Appliance Acts.
But a car in such dangerously defective condition as this one was, which for convenience in tinloading was kept for days, perhaps, for weeks, in a yard so crowded that it was necessary to move it from time to time in the ordinary yard switching, cannot/reasoriably~be-saM-to have been “out of use” during'that time. To allow such a car to be placed upon an unloading track, so short and crowded that a slight excess of speed in moving other cars, or a slight defect in the brakes or a moment of delay in applying them, might result, as it did in this case, in the injury or death of employees, cannot reasonably be said to be keeping such a car “out of use.” As a matter of fact, the defective car was actually in use in a most real and familiar way on the very day of the accident, for, on that day, the unloading of it, which had been commenced before, wascompleted while it was on the “house track” on which the accident occurred.
The Layton Case, supra, coming after the Gonarty Case, decided (all the members of this court as now constituted concurring),that: “Carriers are liable to employees in damages whenever the failure to obey these safety appliance laws is the proximate cause of injury to them when engaged in the discharge of duty;” and the Gotschall Case, 244 U. S. 66, *467clearly proceeded upon the same principle. Neither of the men injured in the Layton or Gotschall Cases was engaged in coupling or uncoupling cars when the accident occurred, but each was injured because of defective coupling appliances when he was going over the cars of his train in the discharge of his duty. Here Lang was injured, when in the discharge of his duty, because a defective car had been placed upon a much used track in a busy yard in such a position that it was impossible for him, in the exercise of due care, to prevent thé cars he was seeking to control from coming in contact with it.
It would be difficult to conceive of a case in which the negligence of the master could be a more immediate and proximate cause of injury to a servant than it was in this case.
Having regard to the extent to which this case must be accepted by other courts as a rule of decision, it would seem that the orderly and intelligible administration of justice required that the principle of the Layton and Gotschall Cases should be disavowed or overruled, for that principle is so plainly in conflict with the opinion in this case that courts and advising counsel will otherwise be left without any rule to guide them in the disposition of the many similar cases constantly pressing for disposition.
For the reasons thus stated I think the judgment of the Court of Appeals entered by the Supreme Court of New York should be reversed and the original judgment of the Supreme Court affirmed.