Baltimore Ohio Railroad Company v. James Wilson
| Decision Date | 18 December 1916 |
| Docket Number | No. 375,375 |
| Citation | 242 U.S. 295,37 S.Ct. 123,61 L.Ed. 312 |
| Parties | BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY, Plff. in Err., v. JAMES B. WILSON |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. James B. Sheean, William J. Calhoun, Will H. Lyford, and George E. Hamilton for plaintiff in error.
Mr. Morse Ives for defendant in error.
This is an action for personal injuries, brought under the Hours of Service Act, March 4, 1907, chap. 2939, § 2, 34 Stat. at L. 1415, 1416, Comp. Stat. 1913, §§ 8677, 8678, and the Employers' Liability Act, April 22, 1908, chap. 149, 35 Stat. at L. 65, Comp. Stat. 1913, § 8657. There is a count alleging an improper construction of tracks, and there are others, which alone are of importance here, alleging that the plaintiff was kept on duty for more than sixteen hours, and subsequently (we may take it in fact to have been fourteen hours later) put on duty again and injured be- cause he was so exhausted as to be unable to protect himself in the work that he was attempting to perform. At the trial the judge instructed the jury that if they found that the defendant had been guilty of the breach of duty alleged, and that the breach proximately contributed to the plaintiff's injury, then they should not consider negligence, if any, on the part of the plaintiff, in determining the amount of the plaintiff's damages, if any. In other words, under § 3 of the Employers' Liability Act, he allowed a violation of a statute enacted for the safety of employees to be found to exclude contributory negligence, although at the time of the accident the violation was fourteen hours old.
It is not important to give the particulars of the accident. The plaintiff was a freight conductor, and was intending to cut a car with a hot box out of a train. He stood on the running board at the rear of an engine on a side track until it drifted abreast of the car standing on the main track, when he stepped off and was very badly hurt.
The first step in the railroad's real defense was that the plaintiff was not kept on duty more than sixteen hours,—a proposition that there was substantial evidence to maintain. But that having been overthrown by the verdict, it contends that the injury must happen during the violation of law, or at least that the Hours of Service Law fixes the limit of possible connection between the overwork and the injury at ten hours by the provision that an employee, after being continuously on...
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...225 U. S. 477, 32 S. Ct. 790, 56 L. Ed. 1171; Hours of Service Act, U. S. Comp. Stat. §§ 8677-8678; Baltimore, etc., Co. v. Wilson, 242 U. S. 295, 37 S. Ct. 123, 61 L. Ed. 312; Garrett v. Louisville, etc., Ry. Co., 197 F. 715, 117 C. C. A. 109; and, see, also, Kansas City So. Ry. v. Cook, 1......
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...and both legs paralyzed, a verdict for $45,000 was sustained in Wilson v. B. & O. Railroad Co. 194 Ill. App. 491. Affirmed 242 U.S. 295, 37 S. Ct. 123, 61 L. Ed. 312. In Thomas v. Otis Elevator Co., 103 Neb. 401, 172 N.W. 53, a verdict for $25,000 was upheld where a twenty-six year old work......
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Paltsio's Case
...for example, that fatigue as the result of previous overwork had anything to do with the injury. See Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. Wilson, 242 U.S. 295, 37 S.Ct. 123, 61 L.Ed. 312. Except on the next previous day (Friday), the employee had worked only half days after school hours during the ......