Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. York

127 F.2d 606, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 3935
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 22, 1942
Docket8980
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 127 F.2d 606 (Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. York) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. York, 127 F.2d 606, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 3935 (6th Cir. 1942).

Opinion

MARTIN, Circuit Judge.

The railway company has appealed from a j adgment in the district court on the verdict of a jury awarding appellee $25,000 damages, fop personal injuries received while serving as brakeman in the employ of appellant.

The injured man and the conductor were seated in the cupola of a caboose, attached to the rear end of a freight train consisting of an engine and thirty-seven cars. The train was proceeding southwardly from Bruceton, Tennessee, to Nashville, Tennessee. The conductor was seated on the east and the appellee on the west side of the cupola, and each was keeping a lookout ahead.

A signal post and sign on the west side of the track, at a point about a half mile north of a left curve some two miles south of McEwen, directed reduction of speed to twenty miles an hour, for the reason that the roadbed and track were being repaired by a section crew in the vicinity of the curve. The reduced speed signal was observed by the application of brakes by the engineer, and the freight train entered the curve at a speed rate of around twenty miles per hour.

Suddenly, the conductor swung for a grab iron and shouted. Through the front window of the cupola, appellee observed that some of the cars ahead were off the track and that the car next to the caboose was careening. He seized two grab irons; but was hurled from the cupola with such force as to strain his back and strike his right hip against the comer of a table below. The caboose had been derailed and thrown against an embankment.

Section men helped appellee out of the caboose. After resting on the ground for a few minutes and recuperating from the shock, appellee, who did not consider himself seriously injured at the time, walked a half to three-quarters of a mile to the rear of the train to perform his flagging duties. Thence, he went into McEwen on a motor car, returned to the train and with other members of the crew rode into Nashville, some fifty-five miles away. The derailment occurred around eleven o’clock A. M., and the engine and the front 27 cars which had not been derailed arrived in the Tennessee capital city around 4:30 o’clock in the afternoon.

Appellee brought action against the carrier under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. §§ 51-59; and, resting upon the applicability of the doctrine, res ipsa loquitur, introduced at the trial only his own testimony and that of two doctors. A motion by the railway company for a directed verdict was overruled.

Whereupon, appellant introduced as witnesses the engineer and the fireman who were on the engine of the freight train at the time of the derailment; the section foreman in charge of the repair work near the point of derailment; the track supervisor of the railroad section where the derailment occurred; the foreman of an adjacent section, who, shortly after the accident, inspected the track at the point of and north of the derailment; the engineer and the fireman of a train which had passed over the derailment point without trouble shortly before the accident; the general foreman of the car department in charge of maintenance of equipment; the assistant engineer on maintenance of way; and four doctors.

It seems unnecessary to detail the evidence. Suffice it to say that the inspection of the derailed cars and caboose after the accident disclosed no defects which might have caused or contributed to the derailment. The railroad track, or roadbed, north of the derailment point was by several witnesses said to have been in good condition and alignment; and, before the accident, the repair work south of the point of derailment was being done by experienced, competent men, in accordance with customary methods.

The fireman of the partly derailed freight train, however, admitted on cross-examination the correctness of a statement made by him before the trial that, as the engine “got into the curve,” he had observed the section men working on the tracks; that “the tracks were stripped from the north end of the curve to about the center of the curve;” and that “there was no ballast holding the ties or rails down in that area,” except “the weight of the tie and rails.” On the witness stand, he stated that “the end portion of the ties was stripped,” and that the ballast in the stripped or open places was missing. He testified, further, that the stripped portion of the track was between five and six rail lengths, although the engineer of the train had estimated the unballasted portion of *608 the track as between three or four rail lengths of thirty feet each.

When asked whether the place where he saw the ballast stripped was from the center of the curve back north toward the caboose, the fireman replied that it was north of the caboose. Moreover, he located the place where the first of the ten cars started to turn over as on the curve, although he could not say whether in the center, or not.

The section foreman who was in charge of the crew working near the point of derailment admitted that, after the accident, he was disciplined by the railroad company for violating its rules, in that he had failed to go back thirty rails from where he was working to ascertain, by inspection, whether the joints were bolted tight. While he was corroborated by two other witnesses that, after the accident, the track was in good condition at the point of derailment, he was contradicted as to this by the testimony of the railroad company’s assistant engineer of maintenance of way, who testified that, after the accident, the rails, both north and south of the point of derailment marked by the section foreman, were out of gauge.

After all the evidence in the case had been received, the motion of appellant for a directed verdict was renewed, and overruled. On this appeal, the action of the district court, in denying the motion, is assigned as error.

(1) Prior to Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188, 114 A.L.R. 1487, actions under the Employers’ Liability Act were undoubtedly governed and controlled by rules of law as announced in the federal courts. Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Co. v. Kuhn, 284 U.S. 44, 47, 52 S.Ct. 45, 76 L.Ed. 157; Western & Atlantic Railroad Co. v. Hughes, 278 U.S. 496, 498, 49 S.Ct. 231, 73 L.Ed. 473; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul R. R. Co. v. Coogan, 271 U.S. 472, 474, 46 S.Ct. 564, 70 L.Ed. 1041.

No pronouncement in the Tompkins case, or in subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court, indicates that federal decisions are not still controlling in such cases. We look, therefore, to the federal courts for guidance upon questions of law presented by this appeal.

(2) Appellant asserts that the res ipsa loquitur rule has no applicability to this case; and that there is no substantial evidence to support the verdict of the jury and the judgment entered thereom

In San Juan Light & Transit Co. v. Requena, 224 U.S. 89, 98, 99, 32 S.Ct. 399, 401, 56 L.Ed.

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Bluebook (online)
127 F.2d 606, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 3935, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/nashville-c-st-l-ry-co-v-york-ca6-1942.