Webb v. Csx Transp., Inc.

• Decision Date: 20 June 2005
• Docket Number: No. 26004.,26004.
• Citation: Webb v. Csx Transp., Inc., 615 S.E.2d 440, 364 S.C. 639 (S.C. 2005)
• Parties: Jack WEBB, Personal Representative of the Estate of Susan Webb, Respondent/Appellant, v. CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC., South Carolina Department of Transportation, and Anderson County, Defendants, of which CSX Transportation, Inc is, Appellant/Respondent.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

615 S.E.2d 440

Jack WEBB, Personal Representative of the Estate of Susan Webb, Respondent/Appellant, v. CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC., South Carolina Department of Transportation, and Anderson County, Defendants, of which CSX Transportation, Inc is, Appellant/Respondent.

No. 26004.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Heard December 1, 2004.

Decided June 20, 2005.

Rehearing Denied July 21, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Sarah P. Spruill, Manton M. Grier, and Marvin D. Infinger, all of Haynesworth Sinkler Boyd, P.A., of Columbia, for Appellant/Respondent.

J. Calhoun Pruitt, Jr., of Pruitt & Pruitt, of Anderson, and John E. Parker and Ronnie L. Crosby, both of Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, PA, of Hampton, for Respondent/Appellant.

Justice PLEICONES:

This is a railroad crossing case. Appellant/ respondent (CSX) appeals a jury verdict awarding respondent/appellant (Plaintiff) $3 million actual damages in his wrongful death action; $250,000 actual damages in the survival action; and $875,000 punitive damages. Plaintiff appeals an order finding CSX violated S.C.Code Ann. § 58-17-3420 (1976) but declining to award him damages for this breach. We affirm the order appealed by Plaintiff, but reverse the jury verdicts, and remand those claims for a new trial.

FACTS

In approximately 1912, a railroad line was constructed in the town of Pelzer. The line runs parallel to the Saluda River and crosses several existing roads. The railroad track effectively separates approximately twenty-one homes (the mill village) from the rest of Pelzer. The area is hilly, and while the railroad created grade crossings at Jordan and Stephens Streets, it made a cut under Green Street and built a wooden bridge to carry road traffic over the railway. The Green Street Bridge was the primary route for persons traveling to and from the mill village.

In July 1998, arsonists damaged the Green Street Bridge rendering it unusable by vehicles. The Jordan Street Crossing became the primary ingress/egress point. Jordan Street is horseshoe-shaped, and the crossing is located in the curve of the horseshoe. The crossing is at the bottom of a hill, so that vehicles approaching it from either direction are traveling downhill. The Jordan Street Crossing is "passive," that is, controlled only by a cross-buck.¹

The railroad line crossing Jordan Street is used only to deliver coal to a Duke Power steam plant; there are approximately five trains a week, and the speed limit for the trains is twenty-five miles per hour. There was evidence that approximately 465 to 495 vehicles used the Jordan Street Crossing on a weekday, with less vehicular traffic on weekends.

On the evening of June 17, 2000, at approximately 6:00 p.m., Doris Medlin and her sister-in-law, Susan Webb (Plaintiff's decedent), were returning to their homes in the mill village after grocery shopping. As Mrs. Medlin drove her car across the tracks, the car was struck by a CSX train returning from the power plant after dropping off loaded coal cars. The train consisted of two engines hooked together, and was traveling about twenty-five miles per hour.² Mrs. Medlin survived the wreck; Mrs. Webb, the front seat passenger, died about two months later from injuries sustained in the accident.

We address Plaintiff's appeal first.

PLAINTIFF'S APPEAL

Whether the trial judge erred in finding CSX's failure to repair the Green Street Bridge was not the proximate cause of this accident?

ANALYSIS

Plaintiff contends that S.C.Code Ann. § 58-17-3420 imposes a legal obligation on CSX to repair the Green Street Bridge, and that its failure to do so entitles Plaintiff to damages pursuant to S.C.Code Ann. § 58-17-3980 (1976). The circuit court agreed 3420 required CSX to repair the bridge, but held that damages were awardable under 3980 only if the failure to repair were a proximate cause of Plaintiff's decedent's death. Finding the bridge repair issue a remote rather than efficient cause of the accident, the court declined to award damages. Plaintiff argues this was error. We disagree.

Section 58-17-3420, entitled "Construction and maintenance of bridges," is part of the General Railroad Law, and provides:

Every railroad corporation shall, at its own expense, construct, and afterwards maintain and keep in repair, all bridges, with their approaches or abutments, which it is authorized or required to construct over or under any turnpike road, canal, highway or other way and any city or town may recover of the railroad corporation whose road crosses a highway or town way therein all damages, charges and expenses incurred by such city or town by reason of the neglect or refusal of the corporation to erect or keep in repair all structures required or necessary at such crossing. But if, after the laying out and making of a railroad, the governing body of a county has authorized a turnpike, highway or other way to be laid out across the railroad, all expenses of and incident to constructing and maintaining the turnpike or way at such crossing shall be borne by the turnpike corporation or the county, city, town or other owner of it.

In this case, CSX's alleged violation of 3420 was tried to the judge as an equity matter at the same time the jury was hearing Plaintiff's negligence claims. The theory of CSX's equitable liability to Plaintiff rests on S.C.Code Ann. §§ 58-17-3980 and 58-17-3990 (1976). Section 3980, entitled "Damages and penalty for unlawful acts where no specific penalty provided for," provides:

If any person shall do, suffer or permit to be done any act, matter or thing in this chapter declared to be unlawful, shall omit to do any act, matter or thing in this chapter required to be done or shall be guilty of any violation of any of the provisions of this chapter, such person shall, when no specific penalty is herein provided for such violation, forfeit and pay to the person who may sustain damage thereby a sum equal to three times the amount of the damages so sustained, to be recovered by the person so damaged by suit in the circuit court of any county in this State in which the person causing such damage can be found or may have an agent, office or place of business. But in any such case of recovery the damage shall not be assessed at a less sum than two hundred and fifty dollars. And the person so offending shall, for each offense, forfeit and pay a penalty of not less than one thousand dollars, to be recovered by the State by action in any such circuit court to be brought by the Attorney General upon the request of the Public Service Commission.

The next statute, § 58-17-3990, provides:

Any action brought as provided in § 58-17-3980 to recover any penalty or damages shall be regarded as a subject of equity jurisdiction and discovery and affirmative relief may be sought and obtained therein. In any such action so brought as a case of equitable cognizance, preliminary or final injunction may, without allegation or proof of damage to the complainant, be granted upon proper application, restraining, forbidding and prohibiting the commission or continuance of any act, matter or thing by this chapter prohibited or forbidden.

Although the failure to repair the Green Street Bridge issue was ostensibly being tried to the judge alone as an equity matter, the jury heard all the evidence, including evidence that CSX at one time promised to repair the bridge, but then decided not to. There was evidence from numerous mill village residents and a local politician about their efforts to have CSX replace the bridge, as well as testimony about the deleterious effects on the community resulting from CSX's refusal to repair.

After the jury returned its verdicts, the judge asked it to return an advisory interrogatory answering whether it found that CSX's failure to repair the bridge was "the proximate cause of damages in this case." The jury returned in six minutes, finding that the bridge issue was the proximate cause, and adding, "we, the jury, strongly recommend that CSX replace the Green Street Bridge."

The trial judge subsequently issued a written order holding there was no proximate causal link between CSX's failure to repair the Green Street Bridge and the fatal accident. Plaintiff contends this was incorrect. We disagree. As the Court said in 1942:

The question always is, Was there any unbroken connection between the wrongful act and the injury, a continuous operation? Did the facts constitute a succession of events, so linked together as to make a natural whole, or was there some new and independent cause intervening between the wrong and the injury? The test is to be found in the probable injurious consequences which were to be anticipated, not in the number of subsequent events and agencies that might arise.

Pfaehler v. Ten Cent Taxi Co., 198 S.C. 476, 18 S.E.2d 331 (1942).

There was no "continuous operation" linking the destroyed bridge and the fatal accident. The finding of no proximate cause is affirmed.³

CSX'S APPEAL

CSX raises a number of issues on appeal, including claims that it was entitled to a directed verdict on both of Plaintiff's negligence theories, that a number of evidentiary errors require a new trial absolute, and that, at the very least, the punitive damages award cannot stand in light of the United States Supreme Court's intervening decision in State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 123 S.Ct. 1513, 155 L.Ed.2d 585 (2003). We find merit in CSX's assertion of reversible error arising from Plaintiff's Green Street Bridge repair claim, and find that several other evidentiary rulings prejudiced CSX. Further, we hold that the United States Supreme Court's decision in Campbell requires, even in the absence of other errors, that a new punitive damages hearing be held. See Durham v. Vinson, 360 S.C. 639, 602 S.E.2d 760 (2004). We address CSX's appellate issues below.

BRIDGE REPAIR

CSX argues that the admission before the jury of evidence relevant only...