Moore v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 05 June 1959
• Docket Number: No. 17483.,17483.
• Parties: J. A. MOORE and Farris Antoine, Appellants, v. MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

264 F.2d 754 (1959)

J. A. MOORE and Farris Antoine, Appellants, v. MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellee.

No. 17483.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

March 20, 1959.

Rehearing Denied June 5, 1959.

James A. Copeland, George L. Schmidt, Maurice M. Davis, Houston, Tex., Jacobs, Davis & Schmidt, Houston, Tex., of counsel, for appellants.

Howard S. Hoover, Houston, Tex., Hutcheson, Taliaferro & Hutcheson, Houston, Tex., Arterbury, Hoover & Graham, Houston, Tex., Carroll R. Graham, Houston, Tex., of counsel, for appellee.

Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and CAMERON and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge.

Plaintiffs below, Moore and Antoine, respectively passenger conductor, and trainman and passenger porter, brought separate suits for damages under Texas law for wrongful discharge. The case proceeding to trial before a judge and jury, evidence was taken and, subject to defendant's motion for directed verdict, the case was sent to the jury on a general charge, to which defendant took no exception and plaintiffs took none except in respect to elements of damage.

In this charge, instead, under Texas law,¹ indeed under general common law, 35 Am.Jur. Secs. 36 and 40, pages 470 and 473, of charging the jury, as the law of the cases on trial, that under the contracts sued on the railroad company would be liable for damages if it discharged the plaintiffs wrongfully, that is without good cause or reason, and that the burden was on it to prove that the discharges were for good reason or cause, the district judge, apparently laboring under the mistaken idea that the suits, instead of being common law suits for wrongful discharge, constituted in effect appeals to the district court from the findings and actions of an administrative board, instructed the jury that the question of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the discharge was not in issue but merely whether the action taken by the company was arbitrary, that is not taken in good faith. Not only was this incorrect instruction given in the main charge but it was repeated and re-emphasized when, the jury returning to the court for further information, one of the jurors, stating: "It is a question of whether we are to rule on whether the officials of the railroad were acting in good faith, or whether in our opinion they made a mistake.", the district judge charged:

"The ultimate matter for you gentlemen to decide — and this is substantially what I told you this morning, although perhaps not exactly in the same words — is not whether Mr. Moore and Antoine in fact were guilty or not guilty of the charges. The question for you all to decide is whether, in reaching the decision to discharge these men, which the railroad officials did reach, they acted in good faith, in an honest effort to arrive at the true facts, as the railroad contends, or whether, as the plaintiffs contend, they acted arbitrarily, capriciously and maliciously or with some wrongful purpose, unjustly and unfairly to discharge these people from the service.

"If it now appears, three years later, that the men in fact were not guilty, but if the railroad officials had before them at the time they took the actions which they took sufficient evidence so that it may be said they acted in good faith, looking at the situation from their position as railroad officials bearing in mind their duties and obligations as such, it might be said that they were acting reasonably, honestly and in good faith, then the defendant is entitled to your verdict." (Emphasis supplied.)

Later, in reply to another question as to whether the burden of proof was on Mr. Moore to disprove the testimony of the witnesses, the court said:

"I said the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove his side of the case by a preponderance of the evidence. Yes, it is necessary for the plaintiffs, Moore and Antoine, to prove that the railroad officials were acting capriciously, or arbitrarily, or unfairly or dishonestly, and if the evidence in your judgment is evenly balanced, then the defendant is entitled to your verdict. * * *" (Emphasis supplied.)

To these instructions no objection was made or exception taken. Thereafter the jury returned a verdict for plaintiff Moore for damages in the amount of $17,000 and for Antoine in the amount of $9000, and plaintiffs moved for judgments on the verdicts.

Defendant in due time moving for judgments notwithstanding the verdict, the district judge, filing a memorandum opinion,² granted the motion and entered judgments accordingly.

Appealing from the judgments against them, upon a stipulation that the cases should be consolidated for appeal and a single record furnished, plaintiffs are here pointing to the fact that, notwithstanding the incorrect submission of issues to the jury and the heavy burden imposed upon them, the jury found for plaintiffs. So pointing, they insist: that there was ample evidence to take the cases to the jury, and, viewed in the light most favorable³ to the verdict, as it must be, it fully sustains the verdicts for plaintiffs; that the judgments non obstante veredicto were, therefore, wrongly entered; and that they must be here set aside and judgments entered on the verdicts in plaintiffs' favor.

The defendant, urging both that the charge was correct and that, whether it was or not, because of plaintiffs' failure to object to it, it must for the purpose of this appeal be taken as correct, insists: that the verdict was without support in the evidence; and that the judgment was right and must be affirmed. We cannot agree with these views.

On the contrary, we find ourselves in full agreement with all of plaintiffs' contentions except that the judgment must be here rendered by directing a judgment on the verdicts for plaintiffs. We are in no doubt: that the cases were wrongly submitted to the jury; that since the suits were, under Texas law, common law suits for damages for discharge, the issue was simply whether the discharges were wrongful and the burden of maintaining their rightfulness was on the defendant and not on the plaintiff; that there was ample evidence to take the cases to the jury and to support the verdicts in plaintiffs' favor; and...