Court Opinion

ID: 9651374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:17:01.064575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:32.785660
License: Public Domain

*313HICKS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I concur in the opinion of the court that the statements of Hillen were competent under the res gestae rule, and also in the conclusion that appellant was a common carrier within the meaning of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act but I think that appellant was entitled to a directed verdict. The gravamen of the complaint is, that Hillen’s death was caused by appellant’s failure to maintain a secure grabiron on the club car. By a secure grabiron the statute means a grabiron sufficiently secure for use as a handhold.
The substance of the testimony of the porter on the club car was that the grab-iron was in perfect condition up to the moment of the accident.
The conductor testified that the grabiron was in perfect condition at the time of the arrival of the train; otherwise it was his duty to notify the car inspectors and make a record in his train book of anything wrong and that there is nothing of the kind in the book. If this is true, appellee’s action fails, and I cannot agree that the jury was justified in disbelieving these witnesses. Their testimony was not discredited by any test of which I am aware. No statement of theirs was involved in any inconsistency or discrepancy upon any material matter. The testimony relied on to contradict these witnesses was that of ap-pellee’s expert. I think that the testimony of the expert is entitled to little or no weight, first, because he made only a casual examination of the broken bolt in evidence. He was a metallurgist, but made no test of its tensile strength nor examination of its microscopic structure; on this point he testified simply that bolts like these, presumably new ones, could resist a pressure of 25,000 pounds to the square inch. In the second place, I seriously doubt whether he should have been permitted to say that Hil-len’s body could not have sheared off the bolts. When he said that he meant of course that it did not, and from my viewpoint this was an invasion of the function of the jury in determining a material issue. Third, the hypothetical question put to the expert omitted a most material element, to wit, the force by which Hillen was being projected by the moving train into a space too narrow for clearance.
Fourth, the testimony of the expert that Hillen’s body could not shear the bolts, is in the face of the obvious fact that it did. The inference, which arises from his testimony, does not negative the fact. On the other hand, the fact refutes the inference. Hillen’s statement was that while “he was riding the corner of the car something hit him in the back and knocked him off.” This “something” was of course the grab-iron, else appellee has no case; and to my mind there is no room for doubt that the impact broke the grabiron and its fastenings. We seek in vain for any other possible explanation in view of Hillen’s broken hip, the freshly broken bolts, one of which was found on the snow beneath, and the condition of the iron itself, which was bent across the doorway of the vestibule of the club car and in the same direction the train that Hillen was riding on was moving.
Finally, let us assume that the expert was right and that Hillen’s body could not and did not shear the bolts. The only inference therefrom is that they were sheared from some other unexplained cause in connection with the accident itself and this is the extent of it and raises no inference of statutory violation. With all due respect for the opinion of the court, I find no basis to support a finding that the grabiron was out of order prior to the accident.