Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Barrett

• Decision Date: 05 March 1958
• Parties: ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. L. C. BARRETT, Sr., Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 37

101 So.2d 37

ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. L. C. BARRETT, Sr., Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida.

March 5, 1958.

Kurz & Maness and William H. Maness, Jacksonville, for appellant.

Bedell & Bedell and C. Harris Dittmar, Jacksonville, for appellee.

DREW, Justice.

L C. Barrett, Sr., a car inspector for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, was seriously injured in the course of his employment. He instituted this suit under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq. to recover damages for such injuries. A motion for summary judgment was made by the railroad and denied. The cause was then submitted to a jury, which returned a verdict in favor of Barrett for $25,000. Judgment was entered and this appeal followed.

We first dispose of the contention of the railroad that the trial court erred when it refused to enter a summary judgment in its favor. The record as it was presented to the court on the occasion of the presentation of the motion for summary judgment disclosed genuine issues of fact. The correctness of his denial of a motion for summary judgment in this case is quite obvious when we consider the federal decisions that require, in Federal Employers' Liability Act cases, the submission of issues of negligence to a jury 'if evidence might justify a finding either way on those issues.' Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 336 U.S. 53, 69 S.Ct. 413, 414, 93 L.Ed. 497. 'To do otherwise,' we said in Chambers v. Loftin, Fla., 67 So.2d 220, 221, 'in close or doubtful cases would be to deprive the railroad workers of (what the Supreme Court of the United States said was) 'a goodly portion of the relief which Congress afforded them.''

In cases arising under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, state rules of evidence are not applied. It is said that such is necessary in the interest of uniformity. Western & Atlantic R. R. v. Hughes, 278 U.S. 496, 49 S.Ct. 231, 73 L.Ed. 473; Jesionowski v. Boston & M. R. R., 329 U.S. 452, 67 S.Ct. 401, 91 L.Ed. 416; Brown v. Western Railway of Alabama, 338 U.S. 294, 70 S.Ct. 105, 94 L.Ed. 100. Moreover, federal decisions govern the question of the sufficiency of the evidence, the type of proof necessary for judgment and the burden of proof. Brady v. Southern Ry. Co., 320 U.S. 476, 64 S.Ct. 232, 88 L.Ed. 239; Garrett v. Moore-McCormack Co., 317 U.S. 239, 63 S.Ct. 246, 87 L.Ed. 239; New Orleans & N. E. R. Co. v. Harris, 247 U.S. 367, 38 S.Ct. 535, 62 L.Ed. 1167; Central Vermont Railway Company v. White, 238 U.S. 507, 35 S.Ct. 865, 59 L.Ed. 1433.

While proof of negligence on the part of the employer is required to support a recovery by an injured employee, the quantum of proof necessary to establish such negligence and the extent of the negligence of the employer required as a basis for recovery have been reduced almost to the vanishing point by recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 448, 1 L.Ed.2d 493, the following is said with reference to this statute:

'Under this statute the test of a jury case is simply whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought. It does not matter that, from the evidence, the jury may also with reason, on grounds of probability, attribute the result to other causes, including the employee's contributory negligence. Judicial appraisal of the proofs to determine whether a jury question is presented is narrowly limited to the single inquiry whether, with reason, the conclusion may be drawn that negligence of the employer played any part at all in the injury or death. Judges are to fix their sights primarily to make that appraisal and, if that test is met, are bound to find that a case for the jury is made out whether or not the evidence allows the jury a choice of other probabilities. The statute expressly imposes liability upon the employer to pay damages for injury or death due 'in whole or in part' to its negligence. (Emphasis added.)

'The law was enacted because the Congress was dissatisfied with the common-law duty of the master to his servant. The statute supplants that duty with the far more drastic duty of paying damages for injury or death at work due in whole or in part to the employer's negligence. The employer is stripped of his common-law defenses and for practical purposes the inquiry in these cases today rarely presents more than the single question whether negligence of the employer played any part, however small, in the injury or death which is the subject of the suit. The burden of the employee is met, and the obligation of the employer to pay damages arises, when there is proof, even though entirely circumstantial, from which the jury may with reason make that inference.'

The above case was decided in February, 1957. In June of that year in the case of Ringhiser v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company, 354 U.S. 901, 77 S.Ct. 1093, 1094, 1 L.Ed.2d 1268, the trial court set aside a jury verdict for the employee because inter alia it was held that the railroad employer 'had no duty to anticipate that a car was being used for such a purpose (as a toilet or outhouse).' There was evidence, however, as the trial court found, that the railroad's employees had used the gondola cars for the purpose of answering a call of nature. The Supreme Court of the United States in that case said: 'In that circumstance there were probative facts from which the jury could find that respondent was or should have been aware of conditions which created a likelihood that the petitioner would suffer just such an injury as he did.'

The facts as discussed in the dissenting opinions in that case were that the injured employee, while sitting in his engine waiting for a brake test, had an urgent call of nature and 'had...