Fonseca v. Consolidated Rail Corp.

• Decision Date: 02 February 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-3180,00-3180
• Parties: (6th Cir. 2001) Carlos Fonseca, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Consolidated Rail Corporation, Defendant-Appellee. Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 585

246 F.3d 585 (6th Cir. 2001)

Carlos Fonseca, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Consolidated Rail Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 00-3180

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

Argued: February 2, 2001

Decided and Filed: April 4, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Toledo. No. 99-07159, James G. Carr, District Judge.

E. J. Leizerman, E.J. LEIZERMAN & ASSOCIATES, Toledo, Ohio, for Appellant.

Kevin C. Alexandersen, Gary F. Werner, GALLAGHER, SHARP, FULTON & NORMAN, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: DAUGHTREY and GILMAN, Circuit Judges; COLLIER, District Judge^*.

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

OPINION

Carlos Fonseca, who developed carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) as a result of his employment as a railroad laborer with Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), sued his former employer for damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA). Conrail filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the statute of limitations had run on Fonseca's claim. The district court granted the motion, a ruling that Fonseca now challenges on appeal. For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual background

Carlos Fonseca, a resident of Toledo, Ohio, began working for the railroad in the early 1950s as a laborer. Fonseca's job was railroad maintenance, which involved changing railroad ties, moving rails, and performing other repairs. Because Fonseca was a seasonal employee, he only worked for about eighteen months over a period of four years. Fonseca left the railroad in the mid-1950s, moved to Texas, and worked for an oil mill. He returned to his employment with the railroad in 1967 as a full-time, year-round laborer, a job he kept until 1997. His duties were the same as before, consisting of track maintenance, rail repair, switch repair, and other manual tasks.

Throughout Fonseca's employment with the railroad, he used hand tools such as tongs, sledge-hammers, spike-mauls, picks, and shovels. He also used power tools such as air-hammers, air-guns, and rail-saws. According to Fonseca's deposition testimony, his hands would hurt after using many of these tools, but the pain would always subside by the next day. This repetitive but temporary discomfort was a frequent consequence of his employment until 1996 or 1997. Fonseca claims that the pain in his hands did not increase between 1967 and the mid-1990s.

Although the exact date is not clear from Fonseca's deposition testimony, he developed persistent pain in his hands sometime between 1996 and 1997. Unlike before, the pain would not go away the next day. The earliest indication in the record of any awareness by Fonseca of this intensified pain was a medical record from March of 1996, when his doctor wrote: "right hand discomfort second and third digits, did not recall history of hand trauma." Fonseca cannot remember saying anything to his doctor about these pains, but does not dispute that he probably provided the information upon which the notation is based. Dr. Spinelli, Fonseca's doctor, did not offer a diagnosis or treat the pain.

In March of 1997, Fonseca underwent quintuple bypass surgery, forcing him to retire from the railroad. During a conversation with an acquaintance later that year, the subject of Fonseca's persistent hand pain came up. The acquaintance suggested that Fonseca seek medical help for the pain and recommended a doctor. In December of 1997, Fonseca took that advice and was diagnosed with CTS.

B. Procedural background

On March 29, 1999, Fonseca filed suit against Conrail in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. His cause of action sought damages under the FELA as a result of his CTS. See 45 U.S.C. § 51-60. Conrail filed a motion for summary judgment on November 1, 1999, arguing that Fonseca's cause of action was barred by the three-year FELA statute of limitations. The only evidence presented in support of the motion was the deposition of Fonseca taken by Conrail. Fonseca produced no evidence in opposition to the motion, but instead relied on the same deposition testimony. The district court granted the motion on January 20, 2000. In this appeal, Fonseca argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment against him on his FELA claim.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of review

We review de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment. See, e.g., Holloway v. Brush, 220 F.3d 767, 772 (6th Cir. 2000). Summary judgment is proper when there are no genuine issues of material fact in dispute and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the court must view the evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. See Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986). The judge is not to "weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial." Anderson v. Liberty Lobby Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986). A genuine issue for trial exists only when there is sufficient "evidence on which the jury could reasonably find for the plaintiff." Id. at 252.

B. The district court erred in granting Conrail's motion for summary judgment based on the FELA statute of limitations

The FELA provides a federal cause of action against a railroad by any employee injured or killed as a result of the railroad's negligence. See 45 U.S.C. § 51. Although the FELA provides a remedy that parallels common law negligence cases, the statute has been "liberally construed ... to further Congress' remedial goal" of holding railroads responsible for the physical dangers to which their employees are exposed. See Consolidated Rail Corp. v. Gottshall, 512 U.S. 532, 543 (1994) (citing previous FELA cases that relaxed the standard of causation required, expanded the doctrine of negligence per se beyond that covered by the common law rule, and permitted recovery for latent occupational diseases).

Despite its "humanitarian purposes," Congress placed certain limitations on recovery under the FELA. See Gottshall, 512 U.S. at 543 ("That FELA is to be liberally construed, however, does not mean that it is a workers' compensation statute."). One such restriction on liability is its three-year statute of limitations. See 45 U.S.C. § 56 ("No action shall be maintained under this chapter unless commenced within three years from the day the cause of action accrued.").

Although "accrual" of a cause of action, for the purposes of a statute of limitations, generally takes place "when there has been a violation of legally protected interests," or "when the tortious event is committed," some injuries and causes are so latent as to elude discovery at the time of the injury-causing event. See Hicks v. Hines Inc., 826 F.2d 1543, 1544 (6th Cir. 1987) (citing the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 899 cmts. c & e (1977)). Thus, in order to determine when an injury accrues under the FELA's statute of limitations, one of two rules applies: the time-of-event rule, or the discovery rule. Id.

Under the time-of-event rule, a cause of action is considered to have accrued the moment a tortious act occurs "[i]f greater than de minimus harm is discernable at the time of the tortious event." Id. The time-of-event rule applies to situations in which a traumatic event occurs, resulting in a noticeable injury, even if the full manifestation of the harm remains latent. See, e.g., Albertson v. T.J. Stevenson & Co., 749 F.2d 223, 231 (5th Cir. 1984) (applying the time-of-event accrual rule to a plaintiff who was exposed to caustic chemicals that initially caused him to lose consciousness and undergo medical treatment, but did not result in severe psychological and physical disorders until a decade later).

In contrast to the time-of-event rule, the discovery rule is applied when no significant injury is discernable at the time of the tortious event, or if the cause of an injury is not apparent. See Hicks, 826 F.2d at 1544. Under the discovery rule, a cause of action is deemed to have accrued when "the plaintiff reasonably should have discovered both cause and injury." Id. A prototypical discovery-rule case is one in which an occupational disease remains dormant long after a plaintiff is exposed to the causes of the injury. See Albertson, 749 F.2d at 230.

The Supreme Court first applied the discovery rule to a FELA case in Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163 (1949), where a railroad employee contracted silicosis years after exposure to the silica dust that caused the pulmonary disease. Because the plaintiff was not aware of the damage being caused as a result of the prolonged exposure to the dust, the Court applied the discovery rule in order to determine when the cause of action accrued for the purposes of the three-year statute of limitations. See Urie, 337 U.S. at 170-71. The Court ruled that, for such latent occupational diseases, "the afflicted employee can be held to be injured only when the accumulated effects of the deleterious substance manifest themselves."Id. at 170. Furthermore, the Court refused to characterize each inhalation of the silica dust as a separate injury. Id. Rather, the injury at issue was not each breath of silica dust, but the "accumulated effect" of all those dust-filled inhalations. Id.

This court has previously applied the discovery rule as described in Urie to a cause of action similar to Fonseca's. See Aparicio v. Norfolk & W. Ry. Co., 84 F.3d 803 (6th Cir. 1996), abrogated on other grounds, Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133 (2000). In Aparicio, a railroad-track maintenance laborer developed persistent discomfort in his right hand in 1987, eleven years after the beginning of his work for the railroad. After "conservative...