Labonte v. New York, N.H. & H.R. Co.
| Decision Date | 04 January 1956 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | William J. LABONTE v. The NEW YORK, NEW HAVEN & HARTFORD RAILROAD COMPANY. |
Carl Liddy, Boston, for plaintiff.
Noel W. Deering, Boston, for defendant.
Before QUA, C. J., and RONAN, SPALDING, WILLIAMS and COUNIHAN, JJ.
The plaintiff, the foreman for a section gang engaged in replacing old railroad ties on the defendant's single line of track running between Worcester in this Commonwealth and Norwick in the State of Connecticut, was injured on a pleasant July morning in 1948, when, he alleges, he stepped into a depression in the roadbed. He brought this action of tort under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, U.S.C. (1946 ed.) Title 45, § 51 et seq., [45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq.] to recover damages. The case is here on his exception to the direction of a verdict for the defendant.
The plaintiff at the time of the accident had been employed by the defendant for thirty-eight years, during thirty-six of which he performed services as foreman of a section gang. On the morning of the accident he was in charge of a crew of eight men, who were engaged in replacing old ties with new ones. They would dig around the old tie, unspike it from the rail, and pull it out. His men would then make the excavation big enough to slip in the new tie which would be raised against the rail by a raising bar while his men shoveled dirt under both sides of the new tie its entire length and then the tie would be spiked to the rail. The plaintiff testified that he was on his way to pick up a raising bar when he stepped into a depression about two or three inches deep and two feet wide and his foot went into the soft dirt in that hole. At the place of the accident the ties extend nineteen inches beyond the rails. Then there is a shoulder twelve inches wide and next a subshoulder extending down seven or eight feet to a ditch. According to the plaintiff's testimony it was while he was stepping off the shoulder onto the subshoulder to pick up the raising bar that he stepped into the depression which started near the shoulder and ran down to the ditch, and his feet went down about three feet. The site of the accident was in the country along the roadbed at a place where trains do not stop and where employees of the defendant were not usually expected to be with the exception of some track repair crew. Photographs taken subsequent to the accident and showing the situation in the general vicinity but not the exact spot show that the roadbed is sparsely covered over less than one half of its surface by a thin covering of medium sized crushed rock.
The plaintiff is attempting to enforce in a State court a cause of action created by an act of Congress, and whether he has made out a case of negligence upon the part of the defendant which should have been submitted to the jury is a Federal question which must be determined in accordance with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and not in compliance with some differing conception of negligence that might prevail in the locality where the action is tried. The standard supplied by those decisions is the only one to be applied in the State court in the determination of the issue whether, as the plaintiff contends, the defendant was negligent in failing to furnish and maintain a reasonably safe place for the performance of his work. Bailey v. Central Vermont Railway, 319 U.S. 350, 352, 63 S.Ct. 1062, 87 L.Ed. 1444; Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 174, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 93 L.Ed. 1282; Stone v. New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad Co., 344 U.S. 407, 409, 73 S.Ct. 358, 97 L.Ed. 441. That standard has been frequently defined. If fair minded men upon all the evidence together with the rational inferences of which it was susceptible might reasonably come to the conclusion that there was negligence upon the part of the employer, then the case should be left with the jury even though the judge might think that the evidence supports contrary inferences or that a finding of no negligence would be more reasonable. Tennant v. Peoria & Pekin Union Railway Co., 321 U.S. 29, 35, 64 S.Ct. 409, 88 L.Ed. 520; Lavender v. Kurn, 327 U.S. 645, 652-653, 66 S.Ct. 740, 90 L.Ed. 916; Ellis v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 329 U.S. 649, 653, 67 S.Ct. 598, 91 L.Ed. 572; Stone v. New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad Co., 344 U.S. 407, 409, 73 S.Ct. 358, 97 L.Ed. 441. We have had occasion recently to follow this rule established in the interpretation of the Federal act and to see that there was no invasion of the fact finding function of the jury in determining whether the employer was negligent. Murphy v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 319 Mass. 413, 417, 65 N.E.2d 923; Keough v. Cefalo, 330 Mass. 57, 110 N.E.2d 919; Langway v. Trustees of New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Co., 332 Mass. 215, 218-219, 124 N.E.2d 519.
The railroad is not an insurer. Its liability under the act is based solely on negligence with the burden of proof upon the plaintiff. Brady v. Southern Railway, 320 U.S. 476, 64 S.Ct. 232, 88 L.Ed. 239; Moore v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co., 340 U.S. 573, 71 S.Ct. 428, 95 L.Ed. 547.
The mere occurrence of an accident of the kind and character described by the plaintiff is not one which, as the plaintiff contends, brings it within the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. Proof of its happening was not proof that it was due to the defendant's negligence. It was said in Shipp v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 283 Mass. 266, at pages 272-273, 186 N.E. 653, at page 655, where a section gang foreman was killed when the hook of a tackling block being used to straighten out a signal post became opened and struck him, that 1 The Shipp case has been followed in Lynch v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Co., 294 Mass. 152, 200 N.E. 877.
See 35 A.L.R.2d 488 et seq. for collection of cases showing the...
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Rankin v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co.
...to the issue under the act whether the evidence warrants a finding that the defendant was negligent. Labonte v. New York, N. H. & H. R. R. Co., 333 Mass. 420, 421-422, 131 N.E.2d 203, certiorari denied 351 U.S. 974, 76 S.Ct. 1033, 100 L.Ed. 420; Ellis v. Union Pac. R. R. Co., 329 U.S. 649, ......