Baltimore & Ohio Railway Co. v. Jackson

353 U.S. 325, 77 S. Ct. 842, 1 L. Ed. 2d 862, 1957 U.S. LEXIS 1586

Opinions

Mr. Justice Clark

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit for damages arising from an injury suffered by a section foreman of the petitioner while operating a motor track car that was towing a push truck on petitioner’s tracks. It was brought under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. The sole question is whether such vehicles when used in the manner here are within the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts.¹ The petitioner contends that neither vehicle comes within the general coverage of the Acts; and, in the alternative if the vehicles are included, that they are exempted as “four-wheel cars” under § 6 of the Acts.²

Both, the trial court and the Court of Appeals have decided that the vehicles involved here are included within the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts and that neither falls within any exemption contained therein. The case reaches us on certiorari, 352 U. S. 889. We agree with the two-court interpretation of the Acts as applied to the facts here involved.

The respondent was injured over five years ago. For 39 years he had been a section foreman of track maintenance for petitioner. He and the crew over which he had supervision were responsible for the maintenance and repair of a section of track between Waring and Durwood, Maryland. They used in their work a gasoline-motor-powered track car equipped with belt drive and a hand brake. The car could carry as many as 12 men and their tools. At various times a push truck or hand car was coupled by a pin to the motor track car and was towed by it to the scene of the work. The hand car weighed about 800 pounds unloaded, had a 5-ton carrying capacity, and had no brakes. Sometimes it carried a load of material and other times only equipment and tools. Each of these cars was equipped with four wheels and was capable of being removed from the rails by a crew of men.

On the occasion in question respondent and a crew of two men, pursuant to orders, had hauled about a ton of coal via the motor track car and hand car from Gaithers-burg to the stationmaster at Washington Grove, a station near the scene of their roadbed work on that day. The coal was placed on the hand car which was pulled along the tracks by the motor car. The two vehicles also carried tools, a wheelbarrow, and other equipment, as well as the respondent and his crew. After unloading the coal they proceeded a short distance beyond the Washington Grove station to work on a section of the westbound track. There they removed the vehicles from the track and worked that section of the rails until about 4 p. m. They then replaced the vehicles on the tracks, fastened them together, and began the return trip to the yards at Gaithersburg. On approaching the Washington Grove station at a speed of from 5 to 10 miles per hour the vehicles struck a large dog and derailed, throwing the respondent into a ditch and causing his injuries. The uncontradicted evidence was that respondent applied the hand brake on the motor track car immediately upon seeing the dog and the cars skidded on wet tracks about 39 feet before the impact. Respondent further testified that the motor track car alone, without the hand car attached, could have been stopped under the same conditions within six to eight feet.

Respondent brought his action against the railroad claiming that (1) the petitioner was negligent in directing him to operate a motor track car and push truck without sufficient braking power, and in requiring him to pull the push truck over wet, slippery rails when the truck was not equipped with brakes, and (2) the injury was proximately caused by petitioner’s noncompliance with the requirements of the Safety Appliance and Boiler Inspection Acts. The District Court ruled and instructed the jury that the provisions of the Safety Appliance Acts included within their coverage the vehicles in question. The issues in both causes of action were submitted to the jury, which returned with a verdict for respondent on “the issues aforesaid.” The appeal in the Court of Appeals was directed only to the second cause of action concerning the applicability of the Safety Appliance Acts. That court affirmed, 98 U. S. App. D. C. 169, 233 F. 2d 660, and as has already been indicated, we are faced here only with the problem of the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts.

The power or train brake provisions of the Safety Appliance Acts apply to the motor track car and the coupling and brake requirements to the hand car when they are employed in the manner here involved. If used separately, though we do not pass on the question, it may well be that entirely different sections of the Acts might apply to each of the vehicles. But here the hand car was not operated by hand as was originally intended. On the contrary, it was fastened by a pin — not a coupler— to a motor track car, a self-propelled piece of equipment, and was hauled with its cargo to its destination on the tracks of petitioner. The hand car had no brakes, although the Acts specifically require “any car” to be equipped with a hand brake.³ It was being used for hauling purposes. Furthermore, the motor track car, instead of being used solely to carry men and tools to their place of work, was used to pull or tow another car— albeit a hand car. It had no power or train brakes but was equipped with a simple hand brake designed for its individual operation. The brake was wholly insufficient for the use to which the railroad put the vehicles.

We believe that the controlling factor is the nature of the employment of the vehicles in the railroad’s service, that is the type of operation for which they are being used. Here at the time of the injury it is admitted that petitioner was putting the motor track car to locomotive uses in pulling a hand car used to haul material, tools, and equipment. In the light of the prime purpose of the Safety Appliance Acts, i. e., “the protection of employees and others by requiring the use of safe equipment,” Lilly v. Grand Trunk R. Co., 317 U. S. 481, 486 (1943), when the railroad uses this type of equipment in this manner— regardless of the label it places on the vehicles — the commands of the Acts must be obeyed. The operation as conducted when the respondent was injured, with a motor track car equipped with neither power nor train brakes pulling an attached hand car with neither an automatic coupler nor hand brake, was in defiance of the requirements of the Acts. See 45 U. S. C. §§ 1-8. This is not to say that these vehicles, even when used as herein described, must be equipped with devices not adaptable to their safe operation. As was said in Southern R. Co. v. Crockett, 234 U. S. 725 (1914):

“We deem the true intent and meaning to be that the provisions and requirements respecting train brakes, automatic couplers, grab irons, and the height of draw-bars shall be extended to all railroad vehicles ... so far as the respective safety devices and standards are capable of being installed upon the respective vehicles.” Id., at 737-738.

It is said that there is no place on the vehicles in question here for a grab iron or a handhold and that power brakes might well increase the hazards of their operation. This may be true, but if these vehicles are to be used in a manner such as here, the Commission through the promulgation of standards or regulations covering such equipment should adapt the safety requirements of the Acts to the safe use of such vehicles and thus protect employees and the public from the hazards of their operation.

It is contended that, since the Commission has for over 60 years considered maintenance-of-way vehicles not subject to the Acts, this consistent administrative interpretation is persuasive evidence that the Congress never intended to include them within its coverage. It is true that long administrative practice is entitled to weight, Davis v. Manry, 266 U. S. 401, 405 (1925), but here there has been no expressed administrative determination of the problem.⁴ We believe petitioner overspeaks in elevating negative action to positive administrative decision. In our view the failure of the Commission to act is not a binding administrative interpretation that Congress did not intend these cars to come within the purview of the Acts. See Shields v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 350 U. S. 318, 321-322 (1956).

The fact that the Commission has not sponsored legislation rather indicates that it thought the problem too insignificant for consideration. We think the Commission expresses this view in its amicus curiae brief when it says “the needs are for strict enforcement of sound operating rules and regulations rather than for air brakes, automatic couplers and the other devices specified in the Safety Appliance Acts.” But this is a matter of policy for the Congress to decide and it wrote into the Safety Appliance Acts that their coverage embraced “all trains, locomotives, tenders, cars, and similar vehicles.” ⁵ This plain language could not have been more all-inclusive. This Court has construed the language of the Act in its generic sense. In Johnson v. Southern Pacific Co., 196 U. S. 1 (1904), with reference to the meaning of the word “car,” the Court said: “There is nothing to indicate that any particular kind of car was meant. Tested by context, subject matter and object, 'any car’ meant all kinds of cars running on the rails, including locomotives.” Id., at 15-16. See also Spokane & Inland R. Co. v. Campbell, 241 U. S. 497 (1916).

While there is a paucity of cases on the point, with none to the contrary of our holding here, as early as 1934 in Hoffman v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 74 F. 2d 227, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held a hand car or push truck, identical with the one here involved, and a small gasoline tractor subject to the Acts. The hand car was attached to the gasoline tractor by means of a hook (though the engine had an automatic coupler on one end) and the petitioner was injured when the hook dislodged and he was pinned between the car and the locomotive. The court unanimously held that if a hand car “is to be operated by a locomotive [which it held the gasoline tractor to be], rather than by hand, we are not inclined to depart from the literal terms of the statute and dispense with the requirement of an automatic coupler.” Id., at 232. Three years later the requirement of the Acts as to power or train brakes was held applicable to other than standard equipment in United States v. Ft. Worth & D. C. R. Co., 21 F. Supp. 916. There a trial court in the Northern District of Texas held that where a locomotive crane was “used to haul cars . . . it is being used for the purposes for which a locomotive is used and is a locomotive . . . regardless of whatever else it might also be.” Id., at 918. In 1955 the Supreme Court of Florida unanimously held in Martin v. Johnston, 79 So. 2d 419, that the same type motor track car as is involved here came within the terms of the Acts. There the motor track car was being used entirely separately and independently from any other vehicle. The Safety Acts require all cars to be equipped with “efficient hand brakes.” The failure of the brakes was the cause of the injury. The court commented: “There being as much reason for requiring the motor-car in question to be equipped with efficient handbrakes, to insure its safe operation when propelled under its own power, as there is for the requirement that such a car be equipped with automatic couplers, where it is to be used in connection with a train movement, we have the view that the Safety Appliance Acts are applicable and that we are not authorized to depart from the literal terms of the statute.” Id., at 420.

Nor do we find that § 6 of the Acts exempts these vehicles from the provisions of the Acts. Though it is true that the cars are of the four-wheel variety, they are used neither in coal trains nor as logging cars. As the Commission points out in its amicus curiae brief, the proviso of § 6 originally exempted “trains composed of four-wheel cars or . . . locomotives used in hauling such trains,” and the legislative history shows that this provision was enacted specifically to exempt coal cars. 24 Cong. Rec. 1477. This language was incorporated in the phraseology of the present section which admittedly through error was thought to apply to the exemption of trains composed of logging cars. See H. R. Rep. No. 727, 54th Cong., 1st Sess. The legislative history of the section reveals beyond doubt that it has no application here.

In view of the history and purposes of the Safety Appliance Acts, and the literal language used by the Congress that they embraced “any car” ⁶ and “any locomotive engine . . . hauling . . . any car,” ⁷ together with the practical necessity of affording safety appliances to thousands of railroad maintenance employees, as well as the public, we conclude that the motor track car and hand car when used by the petitioner in the manner employed here must be equipped in accordance with the requirements of the Safety Appliance Acts.

Affirmed.

1 27 Stat. 531, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §§ 1-16.

2 27 Stat. 532, as amended, 29 Stat. 85, 62 Stat. 909, 45 U. S. C. § 6, provides in part:

“That any such common carrier using any locomotive engine, running any train, or hauling or permitting to be hauled or used on its line any car in violation of any of the provisions of this Act, shall be liable to a penalty . . . : Provided, That nothing in this Act contained shall apply to trains composed of four-wheel cars or to trains composed of eight-wheel standard logging ears where the height of such car from top of rail to center of coupling does not exceed twenty-five inches, or to locomotives used in hauling such trains when such cars or locomotives are exclusively used for the transportation of logs.”

3 36 Stat. 298, 45 U. S. C. § 11, provides in part:

“. . . it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this Act to haul, or permit to be hauled or used on its line any car subject to the provisions of this Act not equipped with appliances provided for in this Act, to wit: All cars must be equipped with secure sill steps and efficient hand brakes . . .

4 We note that in 1953 the Interstate Commerce Commission, in a proceeding to prescribe rules governing inspection of electrically operated units and multiple-unit equipment, has itself declared a “self-propelled unit of equipment capable of moving other equipment” to be a locomotive under the Act. Ex parte No. 179, 297 I. C. C. 177, 192. While the proceeding did not involve motor track cars, the language of the Commission casts some light on that problem. The Commission pointed out that “The language in the act is all-inclusive, and considering its purpose . . . the words ‘any locomotive’ as used in section 2 must be construed as intended to encompass all of the motive equipment of any carrier subject to the act. . . . Appearance clearly cannot determine the classification into which this type of equipment should be placed.” (Emphasis added.) Id,., at 191-192.

5 32 Stat. 943, 45 U. S. C. § 8.

6 27 Stat. 531, 45 U. S. C. § 2.

7 27 Stat. 532, as amended, 45 U. S. C. § 6.