Atchison Ry Co v. Saxon

• Decision Date: 15 February 1932
• Docket Number: No. 291,291
• Parties: ATCHISON, T. & S. F. RY. CO. v. SAXON. *
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

284 U.S. 458

52 S.Ct. 229

76 L.Ed. 397

ATCHISON, T. & S. F. RY. CO.

v SAXON.^*

No. 291.

Argued Jan. 8, 1932.

Decided Feb. 15, 1932.

Messrs. A. H. Culwell, of El Paso, Tex., and E. E. McInnis, of Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Mr. Winbourn Pearce, of Temple, Tex., for respondent.

Mr. Justice McREYNOLDS, delivered the opinion of the Court.

While employed as head brakeman by petitioner railway company and engaged in interstate commerce, J. W. Moore sustained fatal injuries at a New Mexico station. His personal representative obtained a judgment for damages, under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (45 USCA §§ 51-59), in a Texas court.

The Court of Civil Appeals at El Paso reversed this, holding that the evidence failed to show the accident resulted from the carrier's negligence. The Supreme Court granted a writ of error, reversed the Court of Civil Appeals and affirmed the original judgment. It concluded that, viewing all the evidence, there was enough to show negligence and causal connection between this and the death.

The matter is here by certiorari. The railway sets up a claim under the federal statute which it has not heretofore had opportunity to submit for adjudication to any federal tribunal. The cause is one of a peculiar class where we have frequently been obliged to give special consideration to the facts in order to protect interstate carriers against unwarranted judgments and enforce observance of the Liability Act as here interpreted.

Examination of the record convinces us that the Court of Civil Appeals reached the proper conclusion. We can find no evidence from which it may be properly concluded that Moore's tragic death was the result of negligence by the railway company. As often pointed out, one who claims under the Federal Act must in some adequate way establish negligence and causal connection between this and the injury. New York Central Railroad Co. v. Ambrose, 280 U. S. 486, 50 S. Ct. 198, 74 L. Ed. 562; Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. v. Toops, 281 U. S. 354, 50 S. Ct. 281, 74 L. Ed. 896.

In the language of the Supreme Court, the respondent 'recovered in the trial court on the theory that the deceased, while in the discharge of his duties as a brakeman, was running along by the side of the track of the Railway Company and while doing so with the purpose and intent of boarding one of the cars in the train, he stepped on or upon some soft area or hole in his pathway, and was thereby caused to fall and be run over and...