Southern Pac Co v. Berkshire, 106
| Decision Date | 03 January 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 106,106 |
| Parties | SOUTHERN PAC. CO. v. BERKSHIRE |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. William I. Gilbert, of Los Angeles, Cal., and W. F. Herrin, of San Francisco, Cal., for petitioner.
Messrs. C. B. Hudspeth and George E. Wallace, both of El Paso, Tex., for respondent.
This is an action brought in a state court against the petitioner for causing the death of Linder, the plaintiff's intestate. At the trial the petitioner requested instructions that Linder assumed the risk of injury from the cause complained of and that a verdict should be rendered for the defendant. These were refused, the defendant saving its rights upon the record, and the plaintiff got a verdict and judgment. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the judgment; the Supreme Court denied a writ of error, and thereupon a writ of certiorari was allowed by this court upon the ground that an immunity set up under the Federal Employers's Liability Act (Comp. St. §§ 8657 8665) was involved.
The facts so far as made definite by the evidence are not in dispute. Linder was employed by the defendant as an engineer upon a train running from El Paso, Texas, to Deming, New Mexico. At Carney, in New Mexico, he was found sitting on his engineer's seat, unconscious, with his right arm and pretty nearly half of his body outside of the cab, leaning with the right side and arm over the arm rest of the engine. There was a cut about an inch over the right ear. He had been struck by the end of a mail crane, or a mail sack that had been placed on it to be picked up by a mail train following Linder's which was an extra carrying soldiers. In order to have uniformity the Post Office Department fixes the distance of the cranes from the equipment, and the length of the hooks so that, in the language of a witness for the plaintiff:
'The same hook that will take a sack off a crane in Arizona or New Mexico will take it as it goes through western Kansas.'
The evidence was all to the effect that this crane stood at the same distance as all the others along the road. The end of the crane when elevated was not nearer to the train than fourteen inches, but might have been found to be as near as that, and therefore near enough to be capable of hitting a person leaning out of the window, as indeed was shown by the event.
Linder had been upon this route for some years, had passed over it many times and must be presumed to have known of the crane. It was visible from the engineer's seat, half a mile ahead through a front window. About a mile before reaching Carney Linder had noticed that the main driving pin on the engine was getting hot, had crept out upon the running board to see about it, and had returned. It may be supposed that at the time of the accident he was leaning out of the side window to look at it again and was acting in the course of his duty. The position in which has body was first seen and the place of the wound indicate that the was more than fourteen inches out from the engine's side.
In this case the question is not whether a reasonable insurance against such misfortunes should not be thrown upon the travelling public through the railroads, or whether it always is possible for a railroad employee to exercise what would be called due care for his own safety and to do what he is hired to do. The question is whether the railroad is liable under the statute according to the principles of the common law regarding tort. The first element in it is the standard of conduct to be laid down for the road. The standard concerns a permanent condition not only at this place, but at many places along the road and presumably at innumerable others on all the large railroads of the United States. There are no special circumstances to qualify this part of the question—which is whether or not it is consistent with the duty of a railroad to its employees to erect railroad cranes of which the end of the arm when in use is fourteen inches from the side of the train. The railroad is required and presumed to know its duty in the matter and it would seem that the Court ought to be equally well informed. It cannot be that the theory of the law requires it to be left to the uncertain judgment of a jury in every case. See Southern Pacific Co. v. Pool, 160 U. S. 438, 440, 16 Sup. Ct. 338, 40 L. Ed. 485.
It is impracticable to require railroads to have no structures so near to their tracks as to endanger people who lean from the windows of the cars. Most passengers are familiar with cautions against putting out heads or arms. However it may be in other cases where there is more or less choice as to position, this is true as to the postal cranes. The farthest point at which a bag could be picked up is twenty nine inches, and it requires a less distance than that to be sure of getting the bag. In short it would be impossible to use the contrivance with absolute certainty that no accident would happen if a man put his head out at the wrong moment. It equally is impossible to condemn railroads as wrongdoers simply for adopting the device with the conditions imposed by the Post Office Department. When a railroad is built it is practically certain that some deaths will ensue, but the builders are not murderers on that account when the foreseen comes to pass. On the common law principles of tort the adoption of an improvement in the public interest does not throw the risk of all incidental damage upon those who adopted it, however fair it may be to put the expenses of insurance upon those who use it. It is going very far to leave it open to a jury to attach liability in tort to a system by which the end of the arms of postal cranes come to fourteen inches from the car.
But further, we must take it, as we have said, that Linder perfectly well knew of the existence of the crane where it stood, and could have seen it from his seat had he looked, long before he reached it. He entered the employment of the railroad when it had this appliance...
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