Court Opinion

ID: 9446701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:16:32.250186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:45.052791
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the ruling on the motion to dismiss the appeal and in that part of the opinion relating to said motion. I think, however, that the appellant was an employee of the Railroad, and that, in the maintenance and repair of the spur track or side track, the turpentine company was the “agent” of the Railroad within the meaning of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.1
Appellant was in the general employ of the Railroad. The services which he was performing at the time of his injury benefited the railroad as well as the turpentine company. In my opinion, the appellant did not cease to be a Railroad employee when he accepted work on the siding used in the operation of the Railroad. In the maintenance and repair of the siding, I think that the turpentine company was as truly the “agent” of the Railroad within the meaning of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act as the Belt Railway was the “agent” of the Missouri-Pacific in switching the latter’s car in Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 1958, 356 U.S. 326, 330, 78 S.Ct. 758, 2 L.Ed.2d 799.
In Robinson v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 1915, 237 U.S. 84, 92, 35 S.Ct. 491, 59 L.Ed. 849, it was recognized that the contract by which liability was imposed solely on the Pullman Company would be invalid under Section 5 of the Act, now 45 U.S.C.A. § 55, if the employee of the Pullman Company were also the employee of the railroad company. Conceding arguendo that the appellant was the employee of the turpentine company, I think that he was also the employee of the Railroad Company. Further, the Pullman Company in that case and the connecting railroad in Linstead v. Chesapeake & Ohio Ry. Co., 1928, 276 U.S. 28, 48 S.Ct. 241, 72 L.Ed. 453, were not considered as “agents” of the defendant railroad, as I think the turpentine company should be under the meaning of “agent” developed in the Sinkler case, supra.
I therefore concur in part and dissent in part.

. I do not mean to intimate that the cost of such maintenance and repair could not by contract be imposed on the turpentine company. That question is not before us.