Mirkowicz v. Reading Co., 6018.

• Decision Date: 03 June 1936
• Docket Number: No. 6018.,6018.
• Parties: MIRKOWICZ v. READING CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

84 F.2d 537 (1936)

MIRKOWICZ v. READING CO.

No. 6018.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

June 3, 1936.

Thomas J. O'Neill, of New York City (Jeremiah J. Riordan, of New York City, of counsel), for appellant.

Katzenbach, Gildea & Rudner, of Trenton, N. J. (George Gildea, of Trenton, N. J., of counsel), for appellee.

Before BUFFINGTON and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges, and DICKINSON, District Judge.

DICKINSON, District Judge.

Appellant was a member of a regular crew of brakemen in the employ of the railroad company, appellee. He was injured through the charged negligence of his employer. He brought his action in the United States District Court under the Acts of Congress which gave in certain cases a cause of action to injured railroad employees. At the trial judgment of nonsuit was entered against him on the sole ground that he had offered no evidence from which it could be found that he was at the time he was injured, in the language of these acts, employed in interstate commerce. The trial court had admitted (subject to a motion to strike out) testimony of the declaration of the yardmaster as to the intended destination of the cars which the crew was directed to move. The testimony was subsequently, on motion, struck out. The questions which counsel for appellant have submitted are two. We give them in their own words.

1. "Whether or not plaintiff's testimony as to instructions given by the yardmaster relative to the movement of certain cars should have been admitted in evidence."

2. "Whether or not the question of plaintiff's employment in interstate transportation at the time and place of his injuries was one of fact for the jury."

The significance of this quotation will later appear.

1. Counsel have characterized the statement in question as "instructions given by the yardmaster relative to the movement of certain cars." It was this, but it was something more than this. It was a direction or command to the appellant to do the work he was to do, coupled with a statement of the intended use of the cars upon which he worked. The ultimate fact finding, which the jury was asked to make, was that the work upon which the appellant was engaged when injured was interstate. What he did and that he did it by the direction of his employer was evidentiary, but that some one said at the time that it was interstate in character was no evidence of what it in truth was. If the statement had been made by a bystander, it clearly would not have been evidentiary. The circumstance that it was made by the yardmaster who directed the work to be done did not make it evidentiary. The ruling of the trial court, was, in effect, that what the yardmaster said, was evidence that the work was done by direction and what the thing ordered to be done was. The jury was to determine whether it was interstate in character. The fact that the yardmaster or any one else said it was or was not was no evidence of what it was. It is true that the admission of a party of a fact is evidence of the existence of that fact, but there is nothing to bring the statement of the yardmaster within this principle. The trial court was right in holding that the statement of the yardmaster was no evidence of the interstate character of the work done.

Without prolonging this opinion to make an analysis of the cases cited by appellant, none of them are in conflict with the ruling made, but, on the contrary, support it. The learned counsel for the appellant seems to have misconceived what the ruling was. Undoubtedly evidence of what work the appellant was doing and that it was done by direction of the employer, was, as we have said, admissible. The only way to prove it was by evidence of what the direction was. What the yardmaster said was evidence of the direction given. The ruling,...