Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Co. v. Melcher

• Decision Date: 10 July 1964
• Docket Number: No. 17140.,17140.
• Citation: 333 F.2d 996
• Parties: CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND AND PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., Appellant, v. Charles MELCHER, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

333 F.2d 996 (1964)

CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND AND PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., Appellant, v. Charles MELCHER, Appellee.

No. 17140.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

July 10, 1964.

Edward C. Stringer, St. Paul, Minn., made argument for appellant and filed brief with Arthur J. Donnelly and Philip Stringer, St. Paul, Minn.

Carl L. Yaeger, Jr., Minneapolis, Minn., made argument for appellee and filed brief with Allen McCarthy, Minneapolis, Minn.

Before JOHNSEN, Chief Judge, and VAN OOSTERHOUT and MATTHES, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Chief Judge.

Reversal is sought of a judgment under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq., for $39,000, on contentions (1) that there was no negligence on the part of the railroad as a matter of law; (2) that there was not established such connection between the injuries claimed and the accident involved as to entitle the question of their proximateness to be left to the jury; and (3) that the court engaged in an improper exercise of its power of judgment and discretion on whether a new trial should be granted for excessiveness of verdict, in that it rested its denial of such a motion by appellant on erroneous grounds. Each of these contentions was the subject of such assertion below as to be available here.

The aspects and incidents, as set out herein, are what the jury properly could find the facts to have been and what we here must regard it as having done.

The accident occurred on a commuter train of appellant running out of Chicago to Blue Island and beyond, on a cold, snowy March day. Appellee's status was that of head brakeman on the train, but because of its commuter nature, his duties consisted principally of collecting fares and assisting passengers in the first two coaches of the six-car train. The cars were special equipment for commuter service, having four automatic doors, two on each side, to facilitate boarding and unboarding and to avoid hindrance and delay from location of station platforms.

When the train took off from the Chicago (LaSalle Street) station on its run, appellee immediately commenced his collection of fares in the first car. Within a few minutes a passenger reported to him that one of the doors in the second car was standing open. He went back to try to close it. The doors of a train are opened at the station when it becomes subject to boarding. This can be done automatically as to all of the cars by means of a master valve which can be operated at either end of the train. The doors are similarly subject to general closing, and it is the conductor's duty to "throw" the master valve when the train leaves the station.

Each car, however, has a local valve by which its doors can, when necessary, be made to open or close without relation to the rest of the train. When appellee got back to the second car, he made application of the local valve, but this was without any effect upon the door. He then sent a passenger after the conductor.

The doors slide into cabinets along the walls in opening and back out of the cabinets as they close. They have a rubber flange on their outer edge and this flange extended out of the cabinet on the open door. The conductor and appellee both engaged in pulling on the flange, but they were not able to make the door respond. Appellee also had leaned down and cleaned out with his fingers the snow, ice and mud in the exposed portion of the track or slot through which the bottom part of the door was supposed to glide. This similarly, however, neither alone nor in conjunction with the pulling on the flange, produced any result. The conductor then opened up the back of the cabinet so that he could get his foot in to push against the edge of the door while appellee pulled on the flange with both hands.

In the course of these joint efforts, appellee experienced a sudden bolt of pain, like "a firecracker exploding", which coursed through his right shoulder and arm. He continued working on the door, however, until finally, through the conductor's foot-pushing and appellee's flange-pulling, they managed to get it closed. At the time that the condition of the door was brought to appellee's attention, the train was passing 22nd Street, and it was not until it had reached 78th Street, with several intermediate station stops between, that the efforts to close the door succeeded.

While it was not unusual in the winter months for the track or slot of some door to become clogged with snow and ice during the course of a train's run, the situation here was not that of a train out on its run, but of one starting on a run, with inspection of its equipment being supposed to be made before it went out, by carmen located in the station. As an incident of this task, one of the carmen "must report to the conductor that the train is all right to go".

On appellant's first contention — that there was no negligence on its part as a matter of law — it is argued that there was no proof of any mechanical defect which would cause the door to remain open; that the only thing therefore to which the failure of the door to close could be attributed was the accumulation of snow, ice, and mud in the track from the snowy weather; that such injury as appellee may have sustained thus was the result purely of climatic conditions; that appellant could not have a responsibility for this natural cause; and that it accordingly was required to be held that appellant was without legal fault in the situation.

As above indicated, there was evidence that the door failed to respond to appellee's attempted removal of the snow and ice from its track, or to the flange-pulling efforts of the conductor and appellee after such removal. A pushing of the door on its inner side, together with a pulling on the flange of its outer edge, was necessary to get it moved out of its cabinet into the track. Appellee further testified that difficulties as to opening and closing were of general occurrence with the type of door involved, and that he had had occasion to report such incidents "at least a couple of times a week as long as I have been on the job", including one on the train on which he was working the day before the accident.

From this, it would seem possible for the jury rationally to infer that failure of the door to operate could have involved something more than the accumulation of snow and ice in the track. But the jury may perhaps have regarded the snow and freezing conditions as alone being responsible for the failure of the door to operate. Even on this basis, however, appellant would not, as it contends, be entitled to have it held that there could not exist any fault upon its part as a matter of law. The train was permitted to start out on its run with one of its doors not in closing order when, as the jury could properly conclude, with steps of inspection and correction properly taken by the carmen at the Chicago station, in their responsibility to see "that the train is all right to go", this would not and should not have occurred.

As the conductor, a witness for appellant, admitted, the doors "are supposed to be closed when we leave Chicago". This should have been able to be done automatically as the train left the station. If a door would not so operate, no matter what the cause might be, the carmen had a responsibility, the same as for anything else that was not in working order, to correct the condition or to have the car removed from the track. Detection was a simple matter, since all that it was necessary to do in ascertaining whether the doors would close was to throw the general control valve.

There was nothing to suggest that the carmen had made any inspection or tests at all of the doors of the train. Also, the jury could rationally regard such accumulation of snow, ice and mud as there was in the door track as having apparently occurred precedingly and elsewhere, since the train in its starting status was standing in the shed of the station and not in the open. The duty of the carmen to inspect was, on appellee's evidence, one...