152 F. 206 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Washington | 1907
The plaintiff suffered a painful injury while working for the Northern Pacific Railway Company, as a brakeman on one of its trains, at Seattle, in the month of March, 1906. This action was commenced in August, 1906, to recover compensation for said injury, on the alleged ground that it was caused by the negligence of the defendant in failing to keep its track and railway in a condition to be reasonably safe for the'employes of the company required to operate its trains. The effects of the injury are permanent; the plaintiff’s left leg having been mangled and severed from his body by a car wheel passing over it. By his complaint and the arguments of his counsel upon the trial, the plaintiff claimed damages in the sum of $30,000. The jury awarded him $5,000, which sum is less than probably would have been awarded, if it had not been proved that his personal negligence was a contributing cause of the mishap; and a verdict for the defendant on the ground that plaintiff’s contributory negligence had been clearly proved by all the evidence introduced, including his own testimony, would have been directed, if the court had not been influenced to refuse to so direct the jury, by consideration of the act of Congress of June 11, 1906, commonly called “The Employer’s Liability Act” (Act June 11, 1906, c. 3073, 34 Stat. 232), which makes important changes in the law applicable to common carriers engaged in interstate and foreign commerce. The case was submitted to the jury under instructions which assumed that said act is valid, and applicable to the case.
A petition to set the verdict aside has been interposed, assigning numerous grounds, the most important of which are’that said act is unconstitutional, and totally void, and that the court misconstrued the act in ruling that it is applicable to this case; the specifications of the latter ground being that the injury antedated the enactment of the statute referred to, and it should not have been held to be retroactive in effect, and the plaintiff did not by his complaint clearly set forth a cause of action based upon said statute, and it was not proved that the particular train upon which the plaintiff was employed, and by which he was injured, was in use at the time as a carrier of merchandise or commodities pertaining to interstate or foreign commerce, and that by the terms of said act the operation of a railway within a state' is not subject to its provisions except when carrying on interstate and foreign traffic.
This petition having been presented and argued, the court is now required to review its rulings upon the trial, and the instructions given to the jury. After reflection and deliberation, with due respect to contrary decisions of other courts, I am convinced that the employer’s liability act is not unconstitutional, nor in principle a departure from the legislative policy of the government. The substance and sum of tire argument against the constitutionality of this statute is that the whole power of Congress to enact laws affecting the business of common carriers of freight and passengers, is conferred by the interstate and foreign commerce clause of the Constitution, and that the contracts of carriers with their employés and the duties and obligations of each to the other, are matters of purely local concern, and not comprehended within the constitutional grant of power “to regulate com
By the statute under consideration the law of the country has been changed radically; but it is harmonious with, and not more radical than other laws enacted by Congress in the exercise of the power conferred by -the interstate and foreign commérce clause of the Con.stitution which have been uniformly acquiesced-in by the people and enforced by the national courts, since the first shipping law was enacted by the first Congress in the year 1790. Act July 20, 1790, c. 29, 1 Stat. 131. The scope of that law is indicated by its title, viz.: “An act for the government and regulation of seamen in the merchant service.” Sixty-five pages of volume 3⅝ United States Compiled Statutes, 1901 (pages 3061-3125) are required to set forth the statutes which have been enacted by Congress relating to seamen in the merchant service, prescribing regulations comprising almost every detail of “Sailor’s Rights.”
These statutes require contracts for the employment of seamen to be in writing, and signed before the departure of the ships on which they •are to serve from the shipping port; they prescribe the minimum daily ■ allowance, of food, so that sailors shall not be Subjected to hunger, and require warm rooms to be furnished on ships during cold weather, and
As a regulation of the business of land carriers, this statute is' not the first of its kind. The safety appliance law enacted by Congress in 1893 imposes a positive duty on carriers engaged in interstate commerce, to protect the lives and limbs of railroad employés and travelers, by equipping trains with air brakes, and automatic couplers, rendering it unnecessary for a man operating the coupler to go between the ends of the cars, and. with secure grab irons or handholds in the ends and sides of
' As I am constrained to grant the petition for a new trial of this case, for errpr in the instructions given to the jury to the effect that a verdict in favor of the plaintiff might be rendered, notwithstanding his contributory negligence, an expression of my opinion on the question as to the constitutionality of this statute might be evaded now. But the question has been argued fully by able counsel in this case, and it must be- decided in disposing of other cases now pending in this district, therefore I have deemed the first opportunity to be the proper occasion for announcing my positive belief on the subject.
Section 2 of the act provides as follows:
“Sec. 2. That in all actions hereafter brought against any common carriers to recover damages for personal injuries to an employee, or where Such injuries have resulted in his death, the fact that the employee may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery where .bis contributory negligence was slight and that of the employer was gross in comparison, but the damages shall be diminished by the jury in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to such employee. All questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury.” 34 Stat. 232, c. 3073.
The phrase “all actions hereafter brought” is broad enough to include actions for injuries suffered prior to the enactment; but although within the letter of the law, such cases must be deemed to be not within its purview, if the retroactive effect would defeat the law by making it unconstitutional. I hold that a retroactive statute enacted by Congress is not unconstitutional, unless its effect would be a deprivation of life, •liberty, or property, contrary to the fifth amendment, and that the taking away 'of defenses to civil actions based upon rules of law which are purely arbitrary, el g., the statute of limitations, would not be such a ’deprivation. Campbell v. Holt, 115 U. S. 620-634, 6 Sup. Ct. 209, 29 L. Ed. 483. The plea of contributory negligence- as a defense to an action to recover damages for an alleged tortious injury, is an affirmative traverse of the plaintiff’s cause of action, similar to a plea of want of consideration as a defense to an action upon an alleged contract, for
In the case of Little v. Hackett, 116 U. S. 371, 6 Sup. Ct. 393, 29 L. Ed. 652, Mr. Justice Field, in delivering the opinion ot the court, said:
“Tliat one cannot recover damages for an injury to tlie commission of which lie lias directly contributed is a rule of established law and a principle of common justice. * * * If his fault, whether of omission or commission, has been the proximate cause of the injury, he is without remedy, against one also in the wrong.”
This rule has been heretofore generally recognized as a part of the common law, in England and the United States, and the same rule is to be found in the Roman law. Wharton on the Law of Negligence (2d Ed.) § 300; 7 Amer. & Eng. Encyc. Law (2d Ed.) 371, 372.
Therefore this statute creates a new right and a new obligation. I do not question the justice of the rule of comparative negligence, as it may be applied in actions for injuries suffered after its legalization, but it cannot be applied to past occurrences without working a deprivation of property in a manner which the Constitution forbids; for if so applied, the statute, and not the injury, would fix the plaintiff’s rights and the defendant’s obligation, which are the important elements of the cause of action.
For this reason alone, the petition for a new trial will be granted.