Gileo v. Southern Pac. Co.
| Decision Date | 29 April 1955 |
| Citation | 282 P.2d 872,44 Cal.2d 539 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | Charles M. GILEO, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY, a Corporation, Defendant and Appellant. S. F. 19090. |
Arthur B. Dunne and Dunne, Dunne & Phelps, San Francisco, for appellant.
Hildebrand, Bills & McLeod, Oakland, Sheridan Downey, Jr., Los Angeles, D. W. Brobst and Clifton Hildebrand, Oakland, for respondent.
Plaintiff was employed by defendant, a common carrier by railroad, when he was injured while working on the construction of new railroad cars. In this action, which was brought under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq., the parties stipulated to the existence of negligence and the amount of plaintiff's damages. The sole question left determination was whether the act was applicable. The trial court concluded that plaintiff was entitled to the benefits of the act, and defendant has appealed from the ensuing judgment.
In February 1951, after being employed by defendant for ten years to repair railroad cars already in service, plaintiff began working as a carman welder on the construction of new cars. The cars were being built in accordance with a resolution adopted by defendant's board of directors which provided for the acquisition of 5,000 new cars and for their assignment to defendant and a subsidiary, the Texas and New Orleans Railroad Company. Another subsidiary, the Southern Pacific Equipment Company, undertook the construction of 2,000 of the units, including 1,000 gondola cars allotted to the Texas Company. Defendant supplied the labor and shop facilities, paid the workmen and billed the equipment company for labor and certain other maintenance costs. The gondola cars, when completed, were to be shipped out of state and leased to defendant, which in turn, was to sublease them to the Texas Company. Plaintiff was injured in July of 1951 while 'welding corners' on one of the gondola cars.
In the shop where plaintiff worked there was a department for repairs and another for new construction, and positions in both departments were filled from the same seniority list. Every day some of the employees ordinarily engaged in making repairs were placed on new construction in order to offset vacancies created by absenteeism. Men on new construction could be transferred to repair work, and this was done on a few occasions, but plaintiff worked exclusively on new construction after being assigned to it.
The Federal Employers' Liability Act provides in part:
'Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several States * * * shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce * * * for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier, ro by reason of any defect or insufficienct, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment.
'Any employee of a carrier, any part of whose duties as such employee shall be the furtherance of interstate or foreign commerce; or shall, in any way directly or closely and substantially, affect such commerce as above set forth shall, for the purposes of this chapter, be considered as being employed by such carrier in such commerce and shall be considered as entitled to the benefits of this chapter.' 53 Stats. 1404; 45 U.S.C.A. § 51.
It is the position of defendant that it is not liable under the act unless it can be said that in manufacturing railroad cars it was engaging in interstate commerce. This argument overlooks the effect of the second paragraph of the section quoted above, which was added by amendment in 1939. Under that paragraph, plaintiff is considered to have been employed by defendant in interstate commerce and is entitled to the benefits of the act if his duties were in the furtherance of such commerce of affected it in any way "directly or closely and substantially". Ericksen v. Southern Pacific Co., 39 Cal.2d 374, 378, 246 P.2d 642, 645.
The 1939 amendment was enacted to include injured employees previously excluded and to eliminate confusion and hardship to which they were subjected in choosing whether to bring suit under state or federal law. See Shelton v. Thomson, 7 Cir., 148 F.2d 1; Wright v. New York Cent. R. Co., 263 App.Div. 461, 33 N.Y.S.2d 531; Ermin v. Pennsylvania R. Co., D.C., 36 F. Supp. 936, 940; Sen.Rep.No. 661, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. (1939). In order to effectuate the purposes of the amended act, all doubt should be resolved in favor of its applicability. See Lewis v. Industrial Acc. Comm., 19 Cal.2d 284, 286, 120 P.2d 886.
The duties of plaintiff were at least as intimately connected with interstate commerce as those involved in a unmber of cases where the act, as it now reads,...
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Southern Pacific Company v. Gileo
...Accident Commission under the California Workmen's Compensation Act. This challenge to the jurisdiction of the court was rejected in the Gileo case, the court ruling as a matter of law that the F.E.L.A. governed the situation before it. Petitioner having stipulated the issues of negligence ......
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Aranda v. Southern Pac. Co.
...were in the furtherance of interstate commerce or affected it "in any way directly or closely and substantially". Gileo v. Southern Pacific Co., Cal., 282 P.2d 872; 45 U.S.C.A. § 51. The freight car wheels which he molded were manufactured in accordance with annual orders from defendant's s......
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Eufrazia v. Southern Pac. Co.
...another part of the shop and were there attached to the cars. The construction project was the same as that involved in Gileo v. Southern Pacific Co., Cal., 282 P.2d 872, where a welder was injured while working on one of the gondola cars. The factual situations in the two cases are substan......