Argument of Chief Justice Roberts
Mr. Roberts: I have the opinion in case number 05-746, Norfolk Southern Railway Company versus Sorrell.
Timothy Sorrell was injured while working for Norfolk Southern a railroad and he sued Norfolk under the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA) makes railroads liable to their employees for injuries resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of the railroad.
Norfolk claimed that Sorrell’s own negligence was the cause of his injuries.
FELA does not bar relief if the employee is also negligent but instead reduces damages in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the employee.
Sorrell was awarded $1.5 million in damages by a jury but Norfolk objected to the instructions given to the jury on the ground that they contain different causation standards for railroad negligence and employee contributory negligence.
Missouri is apparently the only state to employ different causations standards under FELA and Norfolk argued that the standard should be the same under the act regardless of whether you are considering railroad or employee negligence.
In an opinion filed today with the clerk we agree that common-law the same standard of causation was used for both negligence and contributory negligence.
Nowhere in the statute is there any suggestion that FELA meant to depart from this common-law practice and it would be strange to apply different standards of causation to each party’s negligence when under the act the negligence of the parties must be compared by the jury to determine damages.
We conclude that the act does not abrogate the common-law approach and that the same standard of causation applies to railroad negligence as the plaintiff’s contributory negligence.
In briefing ended argument Norfolk asked us to decide what that causation standard should be but when it petition for certiorari, when it asked us to review the case it only raised the issue of whether the standard should be the same.
That’s the only issue on which we granted review and it’s the only one we are going to decide.
Sorrell maintains that even if the jury instructions were improper any error was harmless because the evidence of his negligence presented a trial could not lead to a different result even with corrected instructions.
We leave that issue to the State Court on remand to consider.
We therefore vacate the judgment of the Missouri Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings.
Justice Souter has filed a concurring opinion which Justices Scalia and Alito have joined.
Justice Ginsburg has filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
