Unadilla Valley Ry Co v. Caldine

• Decision Date: 10 December 1928
• Docket Number: No. 73,73
• Citation: 278 U.S. 139,73 L.Ed. 224,49 S.Ct. 91
• Parties: UNADILLA VALLEY RY. CO. v. CALDINE
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

278 U.S. 139

49 S.Ct. 91

73 L.Ed. 224

UNADILLA VALLEY RY. CO.

v CALDINE.

No. 73.

Argued Nov. 27, 1928.

Decided Dec. 10, 1928.

Messrs. H. Prescott Gatley and Benjamin S. Minor, both of Washington D. C., and Wirt Howe, of New York City, for petitioner.

Messrs. David F. Lee and Thomas B. Kattell, both of Binghamton, N. Y., for respondent.

[Syllabus from page 140 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.

Harold E. Caldine, an employee on the petitioner's railroad was killed in a collision and his administrator brought this action. The case is within the Federal Employers' Liability Act and the only question before us is whether the death resulted in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the employees of the carrier, within the meaning of the Act. Act of April 22, 1908, c. 149, § 1; 35 Stat. 65; Code, title 45, § 51 (45 USCA § 51).

Caldine was conductor of train No. 2 upon a single track that passed through Bridgewater. He had printed orders that his train was to pass train No. 15 in Bridgewater yard, and that train No. 15 was to take a siding there to allow No. 2 to pass. The order was permanent unless countermanded in writing by the superintendent. Its purpose to prevent a collision was obvious and there was no excuse for not obeying it. But this time after reaching Bridgewater instead of waiting there as his orders required him to do, Caldine directed his train to go on. The consequence was that at a short distance beyond the proper stopping place his train ran into train No. 15 rightly coming the other way, and he was killed. The facts relied upon to show that the collision was due in part to the negligence of other employees are these. The conductor of No. 15 generally, or when he was a little late in arriving at a station about two miles from Bridgewater would telephone to the station agent at Bridgewater that he was coming. He did so on the day of the collision. The station agent who received the message testified that he told the motorman of No. 2, but the motorman denied it. At all events the deceased, the conductor of No. 2, did not receive the notice. It is argued that the failure to inform the conductor, and the act of the motorman in obeying the conductor's order to start, if, as the jury might have found, he knew that train No. 15 was on the way, were negligence to which the injury was due at least in part. It is said that the motorman should have refused to obey the conductor and should have conformed to the rule, and that his act in physically starting the car was even more immediately connected with the collision than the order of the deceased.

The phrase of the statute, 'resulting in whole or in part,' admits of...