New York Co v. Bezue
| Decision Date | 25 January 1932 |
| Docket Number | No. 263,263 |
| Parties | NEW YORK N. H. & H. R. CO. v. BEZUE |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Edward R. Brumley and John M. Gibbons, both of New York City, for petitioner.
Mr. Thomas J. O'Neill, of New York City, for respondent.
[Argument of Counsel from page 416 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondent was injured while in the employ of petitioner, an interstate carrier. He brough suit under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (45 USCA §§ 51-59) in the Supreme Court of New York and recovered a judgment which was affirmed by the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals.1 Petitioner urges that at the time of respondent's injury his work was not in interstate commerce within the intendment of the statute.
At Maybrook, N. Y., the westerly terminus of a branch of the railroad, petitioner maintains a roundhouse, a machine shop, a carpenter shop, and a so-called hoist building containing four tracks with two pits, a hoist of large capacity for raising engines, a lathe for repairing driving wheels, apparatus for electric welding, tool room, and electrical shop. These facilities are used largely for servicing and repairing locomotives engaged in interstate transportation. The respondent had been employed at this terminal for about a year, at first as an engine wiper; later, and at the time of the accident, as a member of a general unskilled labor gang. His principal work was the operation of an electric truck with which he transported materials from one portion of the plant to another. By means of this truck, and sometimes without it, he was accustomed to assist in various minor repairs to locomotives brought into the terminal, such as lifting driving rods, pumps, journal boxes, draw bars, assisting in greasing, or greasing, engines, and other work of a similar nature. On the morning of September 2, 1929, he was not using the truck, but pursuant to an order of the foreman of the gang joined other workmen in removing a pair of main driving wheels from a lathe in the hoist building and rolling them along the tracks in the yard to an engine pit where they were to be installed in a locomotive which had arrived at the terminal August 23, and had been set aside for the customary boiler wash given all engines every thirty days. Preparatory to the boiler wash, an inspection was made and orders were issued for certain work, which included the removal of the main driving wheels and shifting them to the hoist shop so that the journal might be turned, the transfer of several parts to the machine shop, the separation of the jacket from the fire box, the replacement of some four hundred seventeen leaking bolts, the renewal of bushings, and other items requiring skilled labor. The fire was dumped, the main driving wheels and other portions needing attention were removed, and the engine was left inert and incapable of locomotion.
The boiler wash and repairs consumed twelve days. On the ninth day, the turning of the journal on the main drivers having been completed, the respondent, on orders of his foreman, joined others of the unskilled labor gang in removing the main driving wheels from the lathe in the hoist shop, placing them upon a track, and pushing them by hand to the turntable, which was then connected with another track into which the men pushed the wheels preparatory to moving them to a pit in the roundhouse where they could be placed under the locomotive. During this work respondent was injured, as has been found, by the negligence of the foreman in removing a block from under the wheels.
The state court held that the terminal facilities in which respondent worked constitute a part of the railroad's system necessary to the operation of the road and to the conduct of interstate commerce; that the fact that some work is there done on locomotives engaged in intrastate commerce does not deprive the establishment of its character as an essential instrumentality of interstate commerce; that the respondent was engaged...
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