Gonzalez v. Southern Pacific Transp. Co.
| Decision Date | 28 March 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-1149,84-1149 |
| Citation | 755 F.2d 1179 |
| Parties | 102 Lab.Cas. P 11,416 Armando GONZALEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRANSPORTATION COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Michael D. Cucullu, Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.
Dan C. Dargene, Charles C. High, Jr., El Paso, Tex., for defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Before RUBIN, TATE, and HILL, Circuit Judges.
It is a criminal offense under the Federal Employers' Liability Act 1 to discipline any person for voluntarily furnishing information to a "person in interest" about the facts incident to an injury to an employee. Moreover, an employee who furnishes information about an injury to an FELA plaintiff or his lawyer may obtain injunctive relief without exhausting administrative remedies if his employer discharges him for furnishing such information. 2 The issue is whether an employee may obtain injunctive relief without exhausting administrative remedies when a railroad discharges him for filing an alleged false accident report with the railroad itself. We conclude that such an employee is entitled to a judicial determination whether he knowingly filed a false report and is not protected by the Act or whether he supplied information believed by him to be true and is protected. If the report is not shown to be deliberately deceitful, the employee is entitled to job-protection by injunction. We remand the case for a factual determination concerning the accuracy of the statements in the report, the employee's belief in their truthfulness, and his intention in filing it.
After a doctor diagnosed a railroad employee's health problem, on August 22, 1983, as a hernia requiring surgical repair, the employee filed a belated report of an on-the-job injury that supposedly occurred on August 15. Armando Gonzalez, a fellow employee, was not at work on August 15, but he filed a report of the claimed accident that suggests, if it does not assert, that he witnessed it. 3 After a company-investigation hearing, the railroad concluded that Gonzalez's report was false and discharged him for dishonesty. In accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the railroad and his union, Gonzalez filed a grievance seeking reinstatement and back pay. The grievance is now at the management appeals stage, and Gonzalez has not exhausted his administrative remedies under the Railway Labor Act. 4 Gonzalez also sought a preliminary injunction, which was denied by the district court, based primarily on its conclusion that Sec. 60 of the FELA 5 does not create an implied cause of action for injunctive relief in these circumstances.
The statute, the full text of which is set forth in the footnote, 6 provides in relevant part:
"Any ... rule ... or device whatsoever, the ... effect of which shall be to prevent employees of any common carrier from furnishing voluntarily information to a person in interest as to the facts incident to the injury or death of any employee, shall be void...."
In Hendley v. Central of Georgia Railroad Co., 7 we held that Sec. 60 protects an employee from formal investigation and discharge or loss of pay after reinstatement for assisting in the investigation of an injury to a fellow employee and giving a deposition to be used in the fellow employee's case. 8 Specifically, we stated that, "[i]f an employee can show that the object of a railroad's investigation is to discipline the employee for furnishing information in an FELA case, ... injunctive relief by a federal district court is 'appropriate if not compelled,' " and that "a district court's ability to enjoin a hearing or conduct which violates Sec. 60 is essential to effectuate the purpose of the section." 9
As we interpreted Sec. 60 in Hendley, its purpose is to prohibit the "overwhelming coercive effect" that disciplinary actions by railroads have on an employee's willingness to testify in an FELA case, notwithstanding the availability of grievance procedures that might later remedy the specific disciplinary action taken against the employee:
Employees who consider testifying in an FELA case will understandably hesitate if they know that they may be forced, as Hendley was, to undergo a formal investigation and possibly suspension for a lengthy period of time. The fact that the employee may ultimately prevail is of little assurance to one who faces possible unemployment for a year or more. Thus, the disciplinary procedure not only violates the mandate that an employer refrain from disciplining an employee for furnishing information, it also becomes a device the "effect of which shall be to prevent employees of any common carrier from furnishing voluntarily information to a person in interest." 10
Had Gonzalez given a deposition to the injured employee's lawyer, therefore, there would be no question that he could invoke the protection of Sec. 60. Nevertheless, the railroad contends that the prohibition against disciplining an employee for furnishing information to a "person in interest" was meant to cover and in fact covers only cases in which employees furnish information to injured fellow employees or their representatives and not a case like Gonzalez's, in which the employee furnishes information to the railroad itself.
The statutory prohibition, however, is not limited to protection for those who furnish information to "employees," or "employee's representatives." It extends to statements made to "a person in interest" (the words being thrice repeated). The railroad itself is certainly a person in interest, but it urges us to substitute our reading of Congress' purpose for the language of the statute. We decline the invitation to substitute our divination of congressional intent for the words Congress chose to use.
If a statute is not clear, resort to legislative history is the long-sanctioned method of seeking the statute's meaning. 11 While this process is referred to as "seeking the intent of Congress," it does not attempt to probe retroactively the collective mind of a majority of the Senate, the House, and of the President, who signed the bill thus making it law, but is an aid to clarification of the words used. Nevertheless, "[a] fundamental canon of statutory construction is that, unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary common meaning." 12 Moreover, "[a]bsent a clearly expressed legislative intent to the contrary, that [statutory] language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive." 13 While we recognize that, "[w]hen aid to construction of the meaning of words, as used in the statute, is available there certainly can be no 'rule of law' which forbids its use," 14 "[t]here is, of course, no more persuasive evidence of the purpose of a statute than the words by which the legislature undertook to give expression to its wishes." 15 As the Supreme Court has recently stated, 16 We, therefore, decline to substitute the word "employee" when Congress repeatedly used "person in interest."
When a railroad employee is injured without the intervention of a third person, there are only two persons in interest: the employee and the railroad. If the employee dies, the representatives of his estate become persons in interest. 17 But the railroad remains the other person in interest. We cannot, therefore, read the statutory phrase as if it said less than it does. Surely Congress knew how to use, and in the statute artfully did use, the word "employee" when it meant employee. The statutory language, therefore, clearly covers an employee's submission of an accident report to the railroad.
Moreover, the purpose of Sec. 60, as set out in Hendley, is to eliminate "the danger that railroad agents would coerce or intimidate employees to prevent them from testifying," or to prevent their "furnishing information to an FELA plaintiff." 18 Thus, protection of testimonial activities of FELA witnesses, such as the filing of accident reports, not only is covered by the statutory language itself but also "effectuate[s] the purpose of the section." 19
Our dissenting brother finds the statute ambiguous and resorts to legislative reports for its true meaning. He concludes that "it is undeniable that the legislative history of Sec. 60 is clear and unambiguous in its rejection of the majority's interpretation." While he accurately recounts part of the legislative history, these excerpts tell us clearly only that the statute, as originally drafted, did not contain the phrase, "person in interest," and was redrafted by members of Congress to exclude protection for disclosure to "ambulance chasers and shysters." The legislative history does not tell us anything about whether Congress intended to protect those who disclose information to employers, and the original language, in fact, seems to have been broad enough to protect those who give information to employers.
The language used in the Congressional reports is no more precise than the language in the statute. Some of it might be cited in support of our interpretation of "person in interest." 20 Our brother agrees with us that the extent of protection under Sec. 60 turns on the interpretation of the phrase "person in interest." We also seem to agree that Congress simply did not address the problem that we face although the dissent considers that, "[e]mployer entitlement to accurate information was ... assumed." Our disagreement turns on the appropriate methodology for resolving the meaning of the words used in the statute. 21
Like all other historical accounts, legislative chronicles do not tell a single tale, and,...
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