Chicago, Burlington Quincy Railway Company v. United States
Citation | 220 U.S. 559,55 L.Ed. 582,31 S.Ct. 612 |
Decision Date | 15 May 1911 |
Docket Number | No. 329,329 |
Parties | CHICAGO, BURLINGTON, & QUINCY RAILWAY COMPANY, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES |
Court | United States Supreme Court |
Messrs. Charles J. Greene and Ralph W. Breckenridge for petitioner.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 559-563 intentionally omitted] Assistant Attorney General Fowler and Mr. Barton Corneau for respondent.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 563-567 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Harlan delivered the opinion of the court:
Two separate actions were brought by the government in the district court of the United States for the district of Nebraska, against the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Company, an Iowa corporation engaged as a common carrier in interstate commerce. The object of each action was to recover certain penalties which, the United States alleged, had been incurred by the company for violations, in several specified instances, of the safety appliance acts of Congress. 27 Stat. at L. 531, chap. 196, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3174; 29 Stat. at L. 85, chap. 87, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3175; 32 Stat. at L. 943, chap. 976, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1909, p. 1143. By consent of the parties and by order of court, the two actions were consolidated and tried together. At the trial the court directed a verdict of guilty as to each cause of action, and a judgment for $300 was rendered for the government in one case and for $100 in the other.
By the original act of March 2d, 1893 (27 Stat. at L. 531, chap. 196, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3174), it was provided that from and after the 1st day of January, 1898, it should be unlawful for any common carrier engaged in moving interstate traffic by railroad to use on its line any locomotive engine not equipped with a power driving-whell brake and appliances for operating the train-brake system, or, after that date, to run any train in such traffic that had not a sufficient unmber of cars in it so equipped with power or train brakes that the engineer on the locomotive drawing such train can control its speed without requiring brakemen to use the common hand brake for that purpose.
The 2d section provided 'that on and after the first day of January, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, it shall be unlawful for any such common carrier to haul or permit to be hauled or used on its line any car used in moving interstate traffic not equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact, and which can be uncoupled without the necessity of men going between the ends of the cars.' The 6th section, as amended April 1st, 1896, provided that any such common carrier using a locomotive engine, running a train, or hauling or permitting to be hauled or used on its line any car in violation of any of the provisions of this act
The 8th section is in these words: 'That any employee of any such common carrier who may be injured by any locomotive, car, or train in use contrary to the provision of this act shall not be deemed thereby to have assumed the risk thereby occasioned, although continuing in the employment of such carrier after the unlawful use of such locomotive, car, or train had been brought to his knowledge.'
After referring to various cases holding that the omission of Congress to make knowledge and diligence on the part of the carrier ingredients of the act condemned, the trial court said: In the circuit court of appeals that judgment was affirmed. In the course of its opinion the latter court said: 95 C. C. A. 642, 170 Fed. 556.
Does the act of Congress in question impose on an inter- state carrier an absolute duty to see to it that no car is hauled or permitted to be hauled or used on its line unless it be equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact, and which can be uncoupled without the necessity of men going between the ends of the cars? Can the carrier engaged in moving interstate traffic escape the penalty prescribed for a violation of the act, in the particulars just mentioned, by showing that it had exercised reasonable care in equipping its cars with the required coupler, and had used due diligence to ascertain, from time to time, whether such cars were properly equipped?
The court below held that an explicit answer to the above questions was to be found in St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Taylor, supra. The government insists that such was the effect of the decision of that case. The defendant contends that the questions here presented were not necessary to be decided in the Taylor Case, and that an examination of them now is not precluded by anything involved in that case.
Under the circumstances and because of the importance of the questions raised, it seems appropriate, if not necessary, to state the origin of the Taylor Case and the grounds upon which this court proceeded.
Neal, as administrator of the estate of Taylor, brought an action in an Arkansas court against the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, & Southern Railway Company to recover damages for the death of Taylor, one of its employees, whose death, it was alleged, had been caused by the company's failure to provide certain safety appliances required by the act of Congress. Pursuant to the direction of the state court, a verdict was returned for the railway company. The case was taken to the supreme court of Arkansas, and that court decided that the act of Congress departed from or supplanted that general rule obtaining between master and servant, which protected the master, when charged with the failure to have safe machinery for the servant if it appeared that the master used reasonable care and diligence in providing suitable and safe appliances. 'But,' that court said, ...
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