Under the Employers' Liability Act, c. 149, §§ 3, 4, 35 Stat.
65, the defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk
are eliminated when the proximate cause of the injury is physical
exhaustion attributable to a violation of the Hours of Service Act,
c. 2939, § 2, 34 Stat. 1416.
So
held where a rest of more than the minimum period
required by the latter act had intervened between the violation and
the injury.
The case is stated in the opinion.
Page 242 U. S. 296
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an action for personal injuries, brought under the Hours
of Service Act, March 4, 1907, c. 2939, § 2, 34 Stat. 1415, 1416,
and the Employers' Liability Act, April 22, 1908, c. 149, 35 Stat.
65. There is a count alleging an improper construction of tracks,
and there are others, which alone are of importance here, alleging
that the plaintiff was kept on duty for more than sixteen hours,
and subsequently (we may take it in fact to have been fourteen
hours later) put on duty again and injured because
Page 242 U. S. 297
he was so exhausted as to be unable to protect himself in the
work that he was attempting to perform. At the trial, the judge
instructed the jury that, if they found that the defendant had been
guilty of the breach of duty alleged, and that the breach
proximately contributed to the plaintiff's injury, then they should
not consider negligence, if any, on the part of the plaintiff, in
determining the amount of the plaintiff's damages, if any. In other
words, under § 3 of the Employers' Liability Act, he allowed a
violation of a statute enacted for the safety of employees to be
found to exclude contributory negligence, although at the time of
the accident the violation was fourteen hours old.
It is not important to give the particulars of the accident. The
plaintiff was a freight conductor, and was intending to cut a car
with a hot box out of a train. He stood on the running board at the
rear of an engine on a side track until it drifted abreast of the
car standing on the main track, when he stepped off and was very
badly hurt.
The first step in the railroad's real defense was that the
plaintiff was not kept on duty more than sixteen hours -- a
proposition that there was substantial evidence to maintain. But
that having been overthrown by the verdict, it contends that the
injury must happen during the violation of law, or at least that
the Hours of Service Law fixes the limit of possible connection
between the overwork and the injury at ten hours by the provision
that an employee, after being continuously on duty for sixteen
hours, shall have at least ten consecutive hours off. It also
objects that the plaintiff, if feeling incompetent to work, should
have notified the defendant. But no reason can be given for
limiting liability to injuries happening while the violation of law
is going on, and as to the ten hours, the statute fixes only a
minimum, and a minimum for rest after work no longer than allowed.
It has nothing to do with the
Page 242 U. S. 298
question of the varying rest needed after work extended beyond
the lawful time. In this case, there was evidence that, whether
technically on duty or not, the plaintiff had been greatly
overtaxed before the final strain of more than sixteen hours, and
that, as a physical fact, it was far from impossible that the
fatigue should have been a cause proximately contributing to all
that happened. If so, then, by the Employers' Liability Act, §§ 3
and 4, questions of negligence and assumption of risk
disappear.
Judgment affirmed.