Court Opinion

ID: 9449157
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:59:30.173629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:44.545842
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Essential to the majority decision is the conclusion that a Young Men’s Christian Association, in furnishing lodging to employees of the defendant railroad, acted as an “agent” of the railroad within the meaning of section 1 of the F.E.L.A.1 Otherwise, the railroad could not be held liable for negligence of the Y.M.C.A. in improperly making up the bed from which plaintiff fell in his sleep.2 I am unable to agree that the Y.M.C.A. was the railroad’s “agent”, as that term is used in the controlling statute.
The leading case is Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific R. R. Co., 1958, 356 U.S. 326, 78 S.Ct. 758, 2 L.Ed.2d 799, rehearing denied, 356 U.S. 978, 78 S.Ct. 1133, 2 L.Ed. 2d 1152. There the Supreme Court held that section 1 of the F.E.L.A. has created a statutory conception of agency broad enough to include “others performing, under contract, operational activities” of the railroad. 356 U.S. at 331, 78 S.Ct. at 762. The key phrase is “operational activities”. The Court viewed the statute as “a response to the special needs of railroad workers who are daily exposed to the risks inherent in railroad work and are helpless to provide adequately for their own safety.” 356 U.S. at 329, 78 S.Ct. at 761. The phrase “operational activities” seems to have been used by the Court to describe the area within which these *283•characteristic “risks inherent in railroad work” are experienced. Under this rationale, the switching of the defendant’s •car at a railroad station, which the negligent third person was performing in the Sinkler case, was obviously an “operational activity” of the defendant’s railroading. By the same token, the providing of sleeping accommodations for off-duty railroad men seems to be the type ■of collateral activity which may facilitate railroading but is not “operational” in character.
This has been made clearer by the more precise articulation in Ward v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R. Co., 1960, 362 U.S. 396, 80 S.Ct. 789, 4 L.Ed.2d 820, where a third person maintaining a privately owned siding was held not to be engaged in an ■“operational activity” of the railroad and, hence, not to be an agent of the railroad within the meaning of the statute. In Ward, the Court added significant words to the key phrase, limiting the special agency concept to independent contractors performing “operational activities required to carry out the franchise” of the railroad. 362 U.S. at 397, 80 S.Ct. at 790. Actually, this very phrase was used by Mr. Justice Brennan in Sinkler to describe a common-law extension of vicarious liability which exists in some jurisdictions. It is evident from the illustrative cases cited therein that the Court understood that extension as being limited to the actual movement of cars and freight and maintenance of operating equipment.3 The language used in Ward makes explicit that the Sinkler doctrine is no broader than this limited common-law extension of respondeat superior. We recognized the restrictive effect of the Ward case in Mazzucola v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 3d Cir.,1960, 281 F.2d 267, 270 n. 4. Accord, Garrett v. Southern Ry. Co., E.D.Tenn.1959, 173 F.Supp. 915, 918-919, aff’d, 6th Cir.,1960, 278 F.2d 424, cert. denied, 364 U.S. 833, 81 S.Ct. 49, 5 L.Ed.2d 59. Any contrary intimation in Leek v. Baltimore & O. R. R. Co., N.D.W.Va.1962, 200 F.Supp. 368, upon which the majority rely, is, in my judgment, unwarranted. I can find no rationale under which the Y.M.C.A. supplying hotel accommodations can be brought within the conception of a contractor performing an “operational activity” of the railroad, “required to carry out the franchise”.
The majority opinion lays some stress upon the character of the injured employee’s activity and the fact that the railroad paid the cost of the employee’s lodging. But it is the negligent third person who must have been performing an operational activity of the carrier in order to impose' liability on the railroad. The nature of the injured workman’s activity and the railroad’s willingness to pay for his overnight accommodations both go to an entirely separate problem: whether, within the meaning of the F.E.L.A., the workman was “employed” at the time of his injury.
Apart from concepts peculiar to the F.E.L.A., I think it clear that the so-called “railroad” Y.M.C.A. was not a common-law agent of the defendant railroad. They were separate corporations performing distinct functions. This “Y” was one of more that 100 similar units organized in various parts of the country by the national Y.M.C.A. to provide lodging and recreational, religious and educational activities for railroad workers *284away from home. The railroad had no authority over the Y.M.C.A. It did not select or appoint the directors or the employees of the Y.M.C.A. It did not supervise or interfere with “Y” activities. True, since the Y.M.C.A. served railroad men primarily, the local “Y” directors were railroad employees. But they were not policy making officers of the railroad and there is no indication whatever that the railroad influenced their decisions as Y.M.C.A. board members in any way.
The only other connection of the railroad with the Y.M.C.A. took the form of substantial donations of money and facilities. But a large donor to such a benevolent organization as a Y.M.C.A. is not for that reason related to the donee as a principal is to an agent. Here again there is no evidence that the railroad used its position as a donor as a means of exercising any control over the Y.M.C.A.
For these reasons I think this court and the court below have erred in holding the railroad responsible for the way in which the Y.M.C.A. made up its beds. The railroad was entitled to judgment n. o. v. in accordance with its appropriate motion at the conclusion of the trial.

. The section reads, in relevant part, as follows:
“Every * * * railroad while engaging in commerce * * * shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce * * * for such injury * * * resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier * * *.” 45 U.S.C. § 51.

. The trouble seems to have been that a broad mattress, inappropriately placed on top of a narrow mattress, tilted when the occupant turned in his sleep.

. The cases cited by the Court may be classified as follows:
Switching operations: Floody v. Great Northern Ry. Co., 1907, 102 Minn. 81, 112 N.W. 875, 13 L.R.A.,N.S., 1196, reargument denied, 102 Minn. 81, 112 N.W. 1081, 13 L.R.A.,N.S., 1196; Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Shelton, 1903, 96 Tex. 301, 72 S.W. 165; Fort Worth & D. C. Ry. Co. v. Smith, 1905, 39 Tex.Civ.App. 92, 87 S.W. 371.
Maintenance of track or rolling stock: North Chicago St. Ry. Co. v. Dudgeon, 1900, 184 Ill. 477, 56 N.E. 796; Wabash, St. L. & P. R. R. Co. v. Peyton, 1883, 106 Ill. 534, 46 Am.Rep. 705; Story v. Concord & M. R. R., 1900, 70 N.H. 364, 48 A. 288; Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Shearer, 1892, 1 Tex.Civ.App. 343, 21 S.W. 133.
Transferring freight from one car to another: Burns v. Kansas City, Ft. S. & M. Ry. Co., 1895, 129 Mo. 41, 31 S.W. 347.