Court rules on rail injury dispute
on Jan 10, 2007 at 10:03 am
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the standard on the degree of fault for a railroad’s negligence in a worker injury case is the same as for contributory negligence by a worker, under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., wrote the main opinion; there were two concurrences, but no dissents in Norfolk Southern Railway v. Sorrell (05-746). The Court declined to spell out just what the causation standard should be, saying that was beyond the scope of the issues it had agreed to decide. Thus, the ruling was limited to a conclusion that the same standard — whatever it is — applies to both sides.
This was the only decision in an argued case Wednesday.
In the railroad decision, the Court commented that “there are a variety of ways to instruct a jury to apply the same causation standard to railroad negligence and employee contributory negligence.” The decision vacated a ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals that had rejected a claim by the railroad that the same causation standard should apply. The case was returned to that state court for further review, with instructions to weigh whether any error in jury instructions was harmless and whether a new trial is required.
The case involved Timothy Sorrell, a laborer for the railroad who was driving a truck to pick up supplies in Elkhart, Ind. His truck encountered another truck owned by Norfolk Southern; before they could pass, Sorrell’s truck veered into a ditch, and he suffered neck and back injuries. He claimed the railroad was at fault, arguing that the other driver had forced him off the road.
The jury applied a different standard of negligence as laid out under the Missouri trial judge’s instruction, and awarded Sorrell $1.5 million in damages. The jury form did not make clear whether the jury had found Sorrell to be negligent, and how much his negligence, if any, had reduced its damages calculation.
Although the decision was a victory for the railroad, the Chief Justice mildly scolded the railroad’s lawyers for attempting to “smuggle additional questions into a case after the grant of certiorari.” Thus, he said, the Court rejected the Southern Railway lawyers’ “attempt to expand the question presented to encompass what the FELA standard should be.” Moreover, the Chief Justice remarked that the railroad was taking a different position on the issue in the Supreme Court than it did in state court. It also would be “unfair at this point,” Roberts wrote, to allow the railroad “to switch gears and seek a ruling from us” on what the standard should be.
In the two concurring opinions, representing the views of four of the nine Justices, those Justices suggested that the standard of causation is already quite well established by past precedent and Wednesday’s decision did not depart from that.
