Garay v. Missouri Pacific Railroad

38 F. Supp. 2d 892, 1999 WL 99063
CourtDistrict Court, D. Kansas
DecidedFebruary 13, 1999
DocketCivil Action 96-1127-WEB
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 38 F. Supp. 2d 892 (Garay v. Missouri Pacific Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Garay v. Missouri Pacific Railroad, 38 F. Supp. 2d 892, 1999 WL 99063 (D. Kan. 1999).

Opinion

Memorandum and Order

WESLEY E. BROWN, Senior District Judge.

This is a product liability action brought under Kansas law. Plaintiffs allege that the decedent, Nicholas Garay, was killed in an accident involving a defective rail car. The matter is before the court on motions for summary judgment filed by defendant FMC Corporation (“FMC”) (Doc. 73) and by defendants Union Pacific Railroad Company and Missouri Pacific Railroad Company (“the railroads”) (Doc. 75). The court has reviewed the parties’ submissions and the relevant law and is prepared to rule.

I. Facts.

The following facts are undisputed or stated in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. 1

A. Background.

The defendant FMC manufactured rail-car MP715966 in August of 1967. This was the hopper car in which the decedent, Nicholas Garay (“Garay”), died. At the time of Garay’s death, the hopper car was owned by defendant Missouri Pacific. Union Pacific owned the rail siding in Sharon Springs, Kansas, where the hopper car was located at the time of Garay’s death.

At the time of his death, Garay was an employee of Bean Acres, Inc. He had been hired the week of March 21, 1994. Bean Acres operates a facility that processes pinto beans. It receives shipments of beans by truck, processes them, and ships them out. Garay’s primary responsibility during the three weeks he worked at Bean Acres was loading sacks of beans onto boxcars.

Garay was nineteen years old at the time of his death. He was described as a quiet person and a good worker who did as he was told. He had a sixth-grade education. Garay did not speak or read English; he spoke only Spanish.

During Garay’s first week working at Bean Acres, he and co-worker Elíseo Perez were helping to load beans into a hopper car. PLResp., Exh. 1 at 33, 39. Garay was inside the car spreading beans to the *895 sides of each compartment as beans were being poured into the top of the hopper car. Id. at 39. Garay and Perez were told by Jesse Montoya, another co-worker, that they had to do this in order to fít more beans into the car. Perez told Montoya he didn’t want to do this because it was kind of. dangerous. Id. According to Perez, he told Garay (in Spanish): “I said, as soon as you get to the pile, I said you can get in there and you can start spreading them around, if you get your feet buried about halfway, I said, you are gone. I said, You are going to be knocked down, you can fall down and a whole bunch of beans is going to come and cover you up.” Railroad Mem., Exh. 9 at 14-15. Garay just smiled and said it wasn’t dangerous at all. Id. at 40, 78. Montoya then told them he just wanted to put more beans in the car and that they didn’t have to do it, and Garay got out of the car.

When Garay called his mother to tell her he had gotten the job with Bean Acres, he said he was going to be running sacks through a machine that would sew them, and that on occasion they would be sending him to check boxcars. FMC. Mem., Exh. H at 25-26. When she asked whether it was a dangerous place to work in, he answered that the most dangerous part of the job was when he had to get on top of the boxcars. Id. at 27. Garay also talked to his brother and mentioned that sometimes beans got moist and would stick to the walls of a hopper car and that he would have to get up on the edge of the car and work with a shovel, and that if anybody fell inside a car there was nothing there they could grab on to, to pull themselves out. Id., Exh. F at 16-17.

B. Unloading the Hopper Car.

Sometime before April 6, 1994, Bean Acres had processed a cargo of beans for shipment on Union Pacific to California. Upon arrival, however, the shipment was rejected due to moisture contamination. Union Pacific returned- the shipment to Bean Acres, hired Bean Acres to reprocess the beans and, subsequently, sold the beans to Bean Acres for an agreed-upon price. In order to reprocess the beans, Bean Acres had to unload them. It was a relatively rare occurrence for Bean Acres to unload a hopper car. April 6, 1994, was the first time Garay had ever participated in the unloading of a hopper car.

A hopper car is unloaded by opening hatches at the bottom and on top of the car, which permits the cargo to flow out of the bottom. At Bean Acres, employees placed a small conveyor belt under the car, so when the hatches were opened, the belt would take the cargo from under the car to a larger conveyor belt which, in turn, carried the cargo to a waiting truck. Because of the size and speed of the small belt, the hatch at the bottom of the hopper car could not be opened more than five or six inches.

On the morning of April 6, 1994, Garay and three other Bean Acres employees, upon instruction from their supervisor, entered the hopper car through the top hatch to remove by hand a layer of beans, described as a “crust”, which had formed on top of the product due to excess moisture. The employees picked up chunks of beans and placed them in buckets for removal from the hopper car. They prepared the truck for unloading and then took their lunch break.

After the conveyor belts were in place, one of the employees opened the bottom hatch. There is evidence in the record that the men encountered some difficulty in getting beans to flow out of the car due to moisture. See Pl.Resp. to Railroads, Exh. 1 at 73. Rick Carson, a supervisor at bean Acres, testified that when they first started unloading, wet beans at the bottom clogged the hatch and they had to get a claw hammer to claw the beans loose and get them flowing. PLResp. to Railroads, Exh. 6 at 25-27. Elíseo Perez testified that the beans were coming out slow. Id., Exh. 1 at 73. At some point, Garay entered the hopper car, although it is not entirely unclear when or why. One reasonable in *896 ference from the record is that he did so to facilitate the flowing of beans or to make sure they were flowing. Eliseo Perez testified that he and Pondo climbed to the top of the hopper ear “to see how the beans was running.” FMC Mem., Exh. C at 20. Perez testified that Pondo and Garay were sitting down on the beans inside of the compartment. Id. at 20-21; Pl.Resp. to Railroads, Exh. 1 at 72. They were talking. Id. Perez asked them if everything was running okay; they said yes. Id. at 21. Garay pointed out a little funnel the beans were making as they ran out and asked Perez if he thought it was very fast. Perez said yes. Jesse Montoya then called to Perez to come down and help move the truck. Perez climbed down and was followed by Pondo. Nicholas didn’t come down; he was still inside the car. Id.

The next anyone knew of Garay was a short time later when a co-worker noticed Garay’s tennis shoe sticking out of the opening at the bottom of the hopper car. The co-worker testified that the beans had been draining at a very slow pace, and that at the moment he saw the tennis shoe the beans drained in great quantities. Id., Exh. 3 at 27-28. Garay had been completely buried in the beans.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
38 F. Supp. 2d 892, 1999 WL 99063, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/garay-v-missouri-pacific-railroad-ksd-1999.