Schneider v. National R.R. Passenger Corp.

• Decision Date: 09 August 1988
• Docket Number: No. 785,D,785
• Citation: 854 F.2d 14
• Parties: Dolores SCHNEIDER, Appellant, v. NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORP., Appellee. ocket 87-7971.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 14

854 F.2d 14

Dolores SCHNEIDER, Appellant, v. NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORP., Appellee.

No. 785, Docket 87-7971.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued March 1, 1988.

Decided Aug. 9, 1988.

Charles C. Goetsch, New Haven, Conn. (Cahill, Goetsch & DiPersia, P.C., of counsel), for appellant.

Sally S. King, Hartford, Conn. (Robinson & Cole, of counsel), for appellee.

Before OAKES and NEWMAN, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, District Judge. ^*

OAKES, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents us with the question whether employment, for purposes of the Federal Employers' Liability Act ("FELA"), 45 U.S.C. Secs. 51-60 (1982), ceases the moment an employee leaves her work station at the end of a day's work, even though at the time of her injury she has not left the employer's premises. The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, Ellen Bree Burns, Judge, in granting summary judgment to the employer, answered the question in the affirmative, relying on the so-called "commuter cases," which involved injuries incurred by employees while commuting to or from the workplace. We do not believe that those cases are applicable to this situation, and therefore reverse.

Dolores Schneider, a ticket agent, brought this personal injury action against the National Railroad Passenger Corp. (hereafter "Amtrak" or "Railroad"), alleging that Amtrak negligently failed to provide her with a safe place to work. At the time of her injuries, Schneider had been assigned to work the 3:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. night shift at the Union Railroad Station in Hartford, Connecticut. The Amtrak ticket office is located just inside the north side door of the station vestibule, which juts out from the eastern wall of the building. In January of 1986 there was a sidewalk and an area for parking cars running along the eastern wall of the station building, with parking spaces set at an oblique angle to the sidewalk and building wall. The easternmost edge of the station property is marked by a line of brass buttons embedded in pavement and is part of the roadway known as Union Place. The area of Union Place lying between the line of brass buttons and the eastern wall of the station building, where Amtrak employees frequently parked their cars, is not a city street, and the City does not clear snow from it or otherwise maintain it.

On Sunday, January 26, 1986, according to Schneider's deposition, she arrived for work and parked her car in the area just described, approximately three car widths, or between fifteen and eighteen feet, from the side door nearest the ticket office. When Schneider's replacement arrived about 11:15 p.m. and indicated he was ready to take over, Schneider left her shift early, between 11:20 and 11:25 p.m. As she was entering her car, she was attacked and robbed by an unknown assailant, who then used her car to drive her to another location where he attempted to rape her.

Amtrak leases the station premises from the Greater Hartford Transit District and its lease, dated October 25, 1982, controls the landlord/tenant relationship. The Amtrak lease agreement defined "Public Use Area" as "the exterior sidewalks ... and other areas on the Land and in the Buildings that are made available by Landlord for use by the general public as more particularly described" in an attached plan of the premises, which carefully notes the line of brass buttons set into the surface of Union Place demarking the station premises and the city street line. In connection with the cross-motions for summary judgment filed by the parties, an authenticated survey map of the station was filed, which indicates the eastern boundary line of the station property as running north/south about one-third of the way into the pavement of the Union Place roadway. The survey map is consistent with the exhibit attached to the lease. An authenticated topography survey map dated November 21, 1977, coincides with these documents, in The lease agreement grants Amtrak use of and access to the public use areas and requires that Amtrak "shall not at any time use ... or suffer or permit anyone to use ... the Public Use Areas or do or permit anything to be done in ... the Public Use Areas which causes injury to persons...." The lease also requires Amtrak to use the premises so as "to provide for the comfort, safety and convenience of its employees and passengers...."

our mind establishing the boundary of the public use area as including the area where Schneider states she was parked.

There is evidence that it was the practice of Amtrak employees, including ticket clerks, to park their cars in one of the spaces by the north side door of the station, and that this was encouraged by the Amtrak lead ticket clerk, who is said to have given each of his subordinates an Amtrak sticker to tape to the windshield of his or her car so that the cars would not be towed from the parking area. It is obvious that the parking spaces by the north side door of the station, where Schneider has testified she was parked, provided the shortest distance to and from the Amtrak ticket office.

Amtrak police officers are assigned to the Union Railroad Station twenty-four hours a day on a three-shift basis, one for each shift. Two Amtrak police officers who worked at Union Station testified in depositions that they had the power of arrest in the area west of the brass buttons where the employees parked, and that their authority extended up to the boundary of the city street. They also stated that they were responsible for anything occurring in the area between the line of brass buttons and the station building. ¹ Indeed, the Amtrak police officer on duty during the 4:00 p.m.-to-midnight shift normally is present at the station and is said often to escort Amtrak ticket clerks to their cars or watches to make sure that they get to their cars safely. The police officer assigned to cover the 4:00 p.m.-to-midnight shift on the date of Schneider's attack apparently had been injured two weeks earlier and had been unable to work since his injury. No substitute had been assigned, so that on January 26 Schneider was without the protection she normally would have had. The officer who covered the midnight-to-8:00 a.m. shift had arrived at the station about 11:15 p.m., having walked to work that evening.

In ruling on the cross-motions for summary judgment, Judge Burns correctly noted that if the injuries occurred within the scope of Schneider's employment, the district court should exercise jurisdiction under 45 U.S.C. Sec. 56 (1982). If Amtrak were correct that the injuries occurred outside the course of her employment, the court would lack subject matter jurisdiction and must dismiss the action.

The judge was also correct in saying that "[i]t generally is accepted that an employee traversing the employer's premises to report to or to leave the job within a reasonable time of her shift is fulfilling a function necessarily incident to employment." However, her opinion then primarily focused on cases holding that, as a general proposition, injuries sustained while commuting to and from work are not covered under FELA, e.g., Getty v. Boston & Maine Corp., 505 F.2d 1226, 1227-28 (1st Cir.1974); Metropolitan Coal Co. v. Johnson, 265 F.2d 173, 178 (1st Cir.1959); Quirk v. New York, Chi. & St. L. R.R., 189 F.2d 97, 100-01 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 871, 72 S.Ct. 105, 96 L.Ed. 655 (1951); Sassaman v. Pennsylvania R.R., 144 F.2d 950, 952-53 (3d Cir.1944). Although the court noted that "exception[s]" to this standard exist if the commuting employee is injured while discharging duties necessarily incident to his or her employment (citing Parker v. Long Island R.R., 425 F.2d 1013, 1015 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 829, 91 S.Ct. 57, 27 L.Ed.2d 58 (1970)), or if the employee is injured on the worksite while on the way to begin or end his or her shift (citing Erie R.R. v. Winfield, 244 U.S. 170, 173, 37 S.Ct. 556, 557, 61 L.Ed. 1057 (1917), and Caillouette v. Baltimore & O. Chi. Term. R.R., 705 F.2d 243, 246 (7th Cir.1983)),

the court nevertheless held the "exception[s]" inapplicable to this case. In so doing, however, the court assumed that Schneider was injured "while on adjacent premises or off the [Amtrak] premises entirely"--an assumption which Schneider's evidence and testimony belies. The court then went on to find...