Hopgood v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

• Decision Date: 14 December 1983
• Docket Number: ANHEUSER-BUSC,No. 83-93,INC,83-93
• Citation: 120 Ill.App.3d 222,76 Ill.Dec. 125,458 N.E.2d 525
• Parties: , 76 Ill.Dec. 125 Stanley HOPGOOD, Plaintiff-Appellee, v., Defendant-Appellee, St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company, and Manufacturers Railway Company, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 525

458 N.E.2d 525

120 Ill.App.3d 222, 76 Ill.Dec. 125

Stanley HOPGOOD, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ANHEUSER-BUSCH, INC., Defendant-Appellee St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company and Manufacturers Railway Company, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 83-93.

Appellate Court of Illinois Fifth District.

Dec. 14, 1983.

Stephen M. Schoenbeck, Schoenbeck, Tucker & Schoenbeck, St. Louis, Mo., for defendants-appellants.

John T. Papa, Callis & Hartman, P.C., Granite City, for plaintiff-appellee.

JONES, Justice:

This interlocutory appeal is brought by the defendants, Manufacturers' Railway Company (hereafter, "MRC") and St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company (hereafter, "SLRC"), pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 308 (Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 110A, par. 308). The plaintiff, Stanley Hopgood, an employee of SLRC, was injured during the course of his employment with SLRC and brought suit against SLRC, MRC, and Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (hereafter, "Busch") pursuant to the Federal Employers' Liability Act (45 U.S.C. § 51 et seq.) (hereafter, "FELA"), which provides for the liability of common carriers by railroad, in interstate or foreign commerce, for injuries to employees from negligence. The trial court has identified the question of law involved as "whether the plaintiff is an employee of a 'common carrier by railroad' for F.E.L.A. purposes under the undisputed facts of this case."

Busch is engaged primarily in the brewing of beer. Both SLRC and MRC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Busch. It is undisputed that MRC is a common carrier by rail. In the first count of his amended complaint the plaintiff alleged that SLRC "existed as a builder and repairer of railroad cars exclusively" for MRC and Busch and "loaned its employees to [MRC] for the repair, maintenance, and replacement of the latter's switches, tracks, targets and their appurtenances." Plaintiff alleged further that MRC, SLRC, and Busch "have expressly or impliedly entered into a joint adventure as a common carrier by rail in and throughout several states of the United States by which railroad cars are built, repaired and transported with freight over tracks and its appurtenances for their mutual benefit and profit." In the second count of the amended complaint plaintiff alleged that on the date he was injured "although [he was] employed by St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company, [he] was employed by defendant, Manufacturers' Railway Company, for purposes of the aforesaid Federal Employers' Liability Act at [SLRC's] Two Utah yard in or near St. Louis, Missouri, in that St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company was a servant of Manufacturers' Railway Company, and therefore plaintiff was a subservent of Manufacturers' Railway Company."

SLRC and MRC moved for summary judgment. In denying the motion the trial court found that there were "questions of fact notwithstanding affidavits of defendants." Upon the denial of their motion for summary judgment SLRC and MRC moved that the trial court certify the cause for interlocutory appeal. The trial court granted the motion and later allowed the plaintiff's motion to supplement the record on appeal by incorporating into it the discovery depositions of six persons, including those of Eldon Harris and Ronald Stillman, whose affidavits seem to be those to which the court referred in its order denying the motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff maintains that a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether SLRC is a mere instrumentality of MRC and Busch and as to whether the operational activity performed by SLRC for the benefit of MRC and Busch is sufficient to impose liability upon SLRC under FELA. Plaintiff does not address the theory of joint venture.

The parties agree that SLRC is engaged in the business of maintaining, repairing, rebuilding, and leasing railroad cars. SLRC owns insulated refrigerator cars but no locomotives. MRC uses its locomotives to switch cars for SLRC. The switch engines are operated exclusively by employees of MRC. MRC switches cars for Busch, Monsanto, "and all of our other industries." MRC charges SLRC a "switching fee" as it does its other customers for whom it performs such services. MRC repairs the tracks in SLRC's yards. SLRC employees clean snow and ice and apparently other debris off the tracks in SLRC's yards but may not do so in MRC's yards. MRC repairs its own engines but not its cars and operates no car repair shop. Some of its employees make minor repairs on MRC cars, but MRC contracts out major repairs to various railroads depending upon the location of the damaged car. Less than one percent of SLRC's revenue is derived from the services it performs for MRC. Ninety-nine percent of SLRC's income is derived from the repair and rebuilding of cars of railroads other than MRC. At the time plaintiff was injured he was working on a car owned by Trailer Train, Inc. His injury was not related to switching operations. As a result of his injury plaintiff received state Workmen's Compensation benefits.

To ship its product to market Busch uses cars belonging to SLRC and to MRC as well as cars belonging to other railroads. Over half of MRC's revenues are derived from Busch. At times employees of SLRC perform repairs to cars within Busch's St. Louis brewery. Such repairs appear to be minor in nature, on the order of fixing a bulkhead or opening a door. To make the repairs in the brewery SLRC employees take their tools with them.

Supervisory employees of MRC do not issue instructions to or attempt to control the work of employees of SLRC. There is no horizontal movement of employees between MRC and SLRC. An employee of MRC who wished to work for SLRC would have to resign from MRC to become an employee of SLRC. SLRC and MRC have their own payrolls, separate seniority rosters, and separate management teams up to the level of Vice President of Operations. Plaintiff was paid by SLRC.

SLRC, MRC, and Busch share some of the same officers and directors. For example, the record shows that August Busch III is a trustee of SLRC and at the same time is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Busch and its Chairman of the Board. Walter Reisinger is, likewise, a trustee of SLRC and a member of the Board of Directors of Busch. John Hayward is Vice President and Corporate Secretary of Busch and the Secretary of SLRC. Roy Chapman is the President of SLRC and the President and Director of MRC. Ronald Stillman is Treasurer and Comptroller of SLRC and MRC and their subsidiaries. Eldon Harris is the Vice President of Personnel for MRC and SLRC and their subsidiaries. He is involved in "day-to-day personnel actions, such as garnishments," and screens applications but does not hire or dismiss employees.

SLRC was founded in 1878 as an association or a common law business trust in Massachusetts. Busch acquired its interest in SLRC in 1967. At the same time Busch acquired its interest in MRC. The general offices of both SLRC and MRC are located in St. Louis, Missouri, in a building owned by a subsidiary of MRC. The general offices of subsidiaries of MRC are located in the same building. MRC owns all the office equipment in that building. All of the equipment located at SLRC's shop where repairs are made, however, is owned by SLRC. SLRC and "probably" MRC use Busch's legal department. The record indicates considerable cooperation among the companies in question, particularly with respect to matters of accounting. A consolidated income tax is filed for Bush, MRC, SLRC, and their subsidiaries.

We turn to plaintiff's contention that SLRC is a mere instrumentality of Busch and MRC through Busch. We find most instructive the case of Fawcett v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Co. (1965), 242 F.Supp. 675, aff'd, 347 F.2d 233, cert. denied, 382 U.S. 907, 86 S.Ct. 242, 15 L.Ed.2d 159, in which the plaintiff maintained that the deceased had been an employee of a railroad within coverage of FELA at the time he had met his death and contended that "because the trucking company [for which the decedent had worked] was a wholly owned subsidiary of the defendant, it, the trucking company, was the alter ego, adjunct, subsidiary agent, and instrumentality of the railroad." The district court in Fawcett (242 F.Supp. 675, 678) adopted the following quotation from Kentucky Electric Power Co. v. Norton Coal Mining Co. (1938), 93 F.2d 923, 926, as a correct statement of the law:

"It is * * * well settled that a corporation is ordinarily an entity, separate and apart from its stockholders, and mere ownership of all the stock of one corporation by another, and the identity of officers of one with officers of another, are not alone sufficient to create identity of corporate interest between the two companies or to create the relation of principal and agent or to create a representative or fiduciary relationship between the two. If such stock ownership and potential control be resorted to only for the purpose of normally participating in the officers of the subsidiary corporation in a manner usual to stockholders and not for the purpose of taking some unfair advantage of the subsidiary or using it as a mere adjunct to the main corporation or as a subterfuge to justify wrongdoing, their identity as separate corporations will not be disregarded but their respective rights when dealing with each other in respect to their separate property will be recognized and maintained. The extent of stock ownership and mere potential control of one company over another has never been regarded as the determining factor in the consideration of such cases. Something must be disclosed to indicate the exercise of undue domination or influence resulting in an infringement upon the rights of the subservient corporation for the benefit of the dominant one. Otherwise, the rights of the separate corporations in respect to their corporate property must be governed by the rules applicable in ordinary cases. [Citations omitted.]"

In Fawcett, as in the case at bar, the employee in...