Torres v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.

584 F.2d 900
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 23, 1978
DocketNos. 77-2701, 75-3165
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 584 F.2d 900 (Torres v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Torres v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 584 F.2d 900 (9th Cir. 1978).

Opinion

CURTIS, District Judge:

These two appeals arise out of an action brought by Jesus and Esther Fabian de Torres against the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company for damages for injuries sustained by the plaintiff while riding on a freight car owned by the Santa Fe but on loan to Southern Pacific. The trial judge granted the Santa Fe’s motion for summary judgment from which the plaintiff appeals. After a trial, the court awarded a judgment against the Southern Pacific in the sum of $295,000 (Torres v. Southern Pacific, reported at 428 F.Supp. 1362 (D.Ariz.1977)), from which said judgment the Southern Pacific appeals. For reasons hereinafter stated, we sustain the summary judgment in favor of Santa Fe and reverse the judgment against Southern Pacific.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

On September 8,1974, an hour and a half before sunup, the plaintiff Jesus Torres and his companion Jesus Navarro boarded a freight car which was a part of a sixty-car train then being operated by the Southern Pacific. Both Torres and Navarro were Mexican aliens. They had just illegally entered the United States at the San Luis border and had walked twelve miles on foot, reaching Fortuna, a desolate desert area about ten miles from Yuma. At this point, the defendants’ freight train was standing on a siding awaiting clearance on the main track.

After traveling about 130 miles from For-tuna a cement hopper developed a “hot box” (an overheated journal resulting from insufficient lubrication) which ultimately caused the derailment of some fourteen cars including the gondola in which the plaintiff was riding. The resulting impact caused the steel ingots to fall on the two men causing injuries from which Jesus Navarro died, and which resulted in the amputation of both of plaintiff Jesus Torres’s legs above the knee. The cement hopper belonged to the Santa Fe, but was on lease to the Southern Pacific under the interchange rules of the American Association of Railroads (A.A.R.).

TORRES v. SANTA FE — 75-3165

The district court granted the Santa Fe’s motion for summary judgment without opinion, so that we do not know upon what it based its decision, but it had before it ample grounds for denying the plaintiff relief on claims based both upon negligence and also upon strict liability.

Although the Santa Fe was the owner of the cement hopper which experienced the journal failure, it was not the operator of it at the time of the accident. It is well established that the duty to discover and remedy .defects in railroad cars lies primarily with the operating carrier. The A.A.R. rules impose a duty on the part of the operating carrier to inspect the interchange cars at every interchange point, and they relieve the originating carrier of all responsibility for the car once the interchange has been effected. (See A.A.R. Rules 1, 89(g)(8).) The applicable regulations of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 49 C.F.R. § 213, et seq., likewise impose the primary inspection obligation on the operating carrier, while the Federal Safety Appliance Act, [902]*90245 U.S.C. § 1 (1972), et seq. imposes liability for a defective railroad car solely on the carrier operating the car at the time of the accident See, Chicago, R. I. & P. R. R. v. Chicago & N. W. Ry., 280 F.2d 110 (8th Cir. 1960), cert. denied, 364 U.S. 931, 81 S.Ct. 378, 5 L.Ed.2d 364 (1961); Clark v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R., 100 U.S.App.D.C. 279, 244 F.2d 368 (1957); Patton v. Baltimore & O. R. R., 197 F.2d 732 (3rd Cir. 1952).

This emphasis upon the responsibility of the operating carriers has prompted some courts to relieve the originating carrier of all legal liability once it has surrendered control of the car at the interchange point. See, Ruiz v. Midland Valley R. R., 158 Kan. 524, 148 P.2d 734, 737 (1944); Demers v. Illinois Cent. R. R., 339 Mass. 247, 158 N.E.2d 672, 674 (1959); Hunter v. Missouri-Kan.-Tex. R. R., 276 F.Supp. 936, 940-41 (N.D.Okl.1967), aff’d, 433 F.2d 352 (10th Cir. 1970).

In those cases where courts have imposed liability upon the originating carrier, the defect of which the railroad car was subject was of a type which could have been discovered by a reasonably thorough inspection of the car prior to the interchange. See, e. g., Smith v. Louisville & Nashville R. R., 267 F.Supp. 716 (S.D.Ohio 1966); Avery v. Norfolk & Western Ry., 52 F.R.D. 356 (N.D. Ohio 1971); Huck v. Chicago, S. P., M. & O. Ry., 16 Wis.2d 466, 114 N.W.2d 811.

The record before the trial court contains allegations by the Santa Fe that it had made two thorough inspections of the journal boxes on the cement hopper prior to the interchange. The record also contained allegations that the Southern Pacific had made its own independent inspection of the journal boxes on the day of the interchange and no defects were revealed. These allegations were never controverted. Furthermore, it appeared that the undisputed cause of the derailment was the hot box, an operational malfunction of the type which does not give rise to an inference that a detectable defect was present at the point of interchange. In view of the applicable law, and the undisputed facts, summary judgment was appropriate on the issue of negligence.

On the issue of strict liability, it is clear that the Santa Fe was not the type of a provider of an allegedly defective product that would be held strictly liable for product defects by the Arizona courts. No Arizona case has been called to our attention which holds a lessor of a chattel strictly liable to a lessee for defects in the chattel. Moreover, it seems clear that even in those jurisdictions which do recognize some lease-relationships as a basis for the application of the doctrine of strict liability, the highly specialized industry-use interchange program to be found in this case is too dissimilar to the commercial distribution of a product to warrant the doctrine’s application.

The summary judgment in favor of the Santa Fe Railroad is therefore affirmed.

TORRES v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC — 77-2701

In this appeal, the appellant Southern Pacific contends that the trial court has imposed upon it a duty toward trespassers beyond that which the law allows. We agree.

Since Torres at no time sought or received any permission to board or ride the freight train, he and his companion were clearly trespassers, and no contention is being made to the contrary.

There is no evidence that any member of the train crew saw either of the men prior to the accident, although no effort was made by the hitchhikers to hide.

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584 F.2d 900, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/torres-v-southern-pacific-transportation-co-ca9-1978.