(DOWNLOAD) "Hietala v. Boston & A. R. R." by Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Hietala v. Boston & A. R. R.
- Author : Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
- Release Date : January 18, 1936
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 68 KB
Description
LUMMUS, Justice. This is an action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (Act of April 22, 1908, c. 149, 35 U.S.Stat. at Large, 65 U.S.C. title 45, § 51 et seq. [42 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq.]) for personal injuries sustained by an employee, engaged in interstate commerce, of an interstate common carrier by railroad. The evidence tended to show the following facts. On August 24, 1929, the plaintiff was one of a gang of laborers engaged in removing the earth from between the ties of the defendant's tracks at Pittsfield. He had been working there about twenty days. He knew that trains were running on the tracks. Having been directed to get a pick, he started eastward along the straight southerly track on which east bound trains ran, to get a pick which was in a tool box under the Second Street bridge. He walked in the middle of that track, for there were men working on each side and the ground was torn up. He met a train, travelling westward on the northerly track. A locomotive that had brought a train into the Pittsfield station, westerly of the locus, started easterly along the track on which the plaintiff was walking, for the purpose of turning around at a junction easterly of the locus. The crew of the locomotive were familiar with the work being done and with the presence of many laborers on and about the tracks. Orders of the defendant had limited all trains there to a speed of fifteen miles an hour. The locomotive gave no signal of its approach until the instant before the injury. Two men on the ground had been detailed to give warning with police whistles of the approach of locomotives, but the plaintiff heard no such warning during his journey, although he was listening. Hough v. Boston Elevated Railway Co., 262 Mass. 91, 159 N.E. 526. During his journey he looked back three times, but saw nothing coming along the track behind him. When he looked back last he was forty or fifty feet westerly from the First Street bridge. When he had gone about two thirds of the way under that bridge, he heard the locomotive whistle, and jumped off the track, but was struck on the arm by the locomotive. Evidence for the defendant tended to show that the plaintiff was walking clear of the track, and was struck when he suddenly came up on the track. But the evidence for the plaintiff was as stated.