Section 2 of the supplementary Safety Appliance Act of April 14,
1910. c. 160, 36 Stat. 298, requiring interstate railway carriers
to equip their cars with secure runningboards, ladders, and
hand-holds or grab-irons, became effective July 1, 1911.
The purpose of § 3 of the act is to standardize the appliances
required by § 2, and the purpose of the proviso in it is to confer
authority
Page 242 U. S. 463
on the Interstate Commerce Commission to extend the time within
which the carriers may conform to the established standards, but it
does not authorize the Commission to change the date upon which § 2
became effective.
72 So. 158 affirmed.
The case is stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.
It will contribute to brevity in this opinion to designate the
parties as they were in the state circuit court, the defendant in
error as plaintiff and the railroad companies as defendants.
The plaintiff, a switchman in the employ of the defendants, was
in the act of mounting, by means of a ladder, to the top of a box
car to set the brake, when the hand-hold or grab-iron placed at the
top of the ladder, and intended to be fastened securely to the roof
of the car, gave way, causing him to fall to the ground and sustain
injuries, for which he instituted suit in a circuit court of
Mississippi, and recovered a judgment, which was affirmed by the
supreme court of the state. This judgment is now here for review on
writ of error.
Counsel for the defendants concede that the plaintiff pleaded
and proved a case which entitles him to recover under the
provisions of the Supplement to the Federal Safety Appliance Act,
approved April 14, 1910, if § 2 of that act was in effect at the
time the accident to the plaintiff occurred on the night of March
15th, 1913; but they
Page 242 U. S. 464
claim that this section of the act was not in effect at that
time, because it had been suspended until July 1st, 1916, by an
order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, issued on March 13,
1911, under the authority contained in the proviso of § 3 of the
act.
Thus, the sole question presented for decision is, does the
order issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission on March 13,
1911, suspend the provisions of § 2 of the act under discussion
until July 1st, 1916?
To answer this question requires an examination of §§ 2 and 3 of
the Act of April 14, 1910, and of the order of the Interstate
Commerce Commission of March 13, 1911.
Section 2 of the act provides that, on and after July 1st, 1911,
"all cars" used by any common carrier subject to the act
"requiring secure ladders and secure running boards shall be
equipped with such ladders and running boards, and all cars having
ladders shall also be equipped with secure handholds or grab irons
on their roofs at the tops of such ladders,"
and it makes it unlawful to use cars not so equipped.
A box car could not properly be used without a secure ladder,
and since, by its terms, all cars having ladders must be equipped
with secure handholds, the application of this section (if it was
not suspended) to the case at bar, the neglect of its requirements,
and the liability of the defendants to the plaintiff for the result
to him of such neglect, are too clear for discussion.
Texas
& Pacific Ry. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S.
33.
Section 3 of the act provides that within six months from the
passage of the act the Interstate Commerce Commission "shall
designate the number, dimensions, location and manner of
application of the appliances
provided for by section two of
this Act," and shall give notice of such designation to all
common carriers subject to the provisions of the act by such means
as the Commission
Page 242 U. S. 465
may deem proper, and
"thereafter said number, location, dimensions, and manner of
application, as designated by said Commission, shall remain as the
standards of equipment to be used on all cars subject to the
provisions of this act,"
and failure to conform its equipment to such standards shall
subject the neglecting carrier to like penalty as failure to comply
with any requirements of the act. Then follows this proviso, upon
which the defendants rely,
viz.:
"
Provided, That the Interstate Commerce Commission may,
upon full hearing and for good cause, extend the period within
which any common carrier
shall comply with the provisions of
this section with respect to the equipment of cars actually in
service upon the date of the passage of this act."
Pursuant to the command of this third section, the Interstate
Commerce Commission, on March 13, 1911, issued an order designating
"the number, dimensions, sizes and manner of application of the
appliances provided for by section 2 of the act," and specifically
describing the size, character, and location of ladders on "freight
train cars" and of handholds to be maintained at the tops of such
ladders. By the terms of this order, carriers were granted an
extension of five years from July 1st, 1911, in which to bring such
safety appliances into compliance with the standards by it
prescribed.
The claim of the defendant railway companies with respect to
these two sections is built up wholly upon the assertion, it cannot
properly be called argument, that, because, in the part of § 3 just
quoted, reference is made to § 2 for a description of the safety
appliances to be standardized, therefore the whole of § 2 must be
treated as so incorporated into § 3 as to be comprehended within
the expression of the proviso giving power to the Interstate
Commerce Commission to extend the period within which any common
carrier "
shall comply with the provisions of
Page 242 U. S. 466
this (the third) section," etc., and that § 2 was
therefore suspended until July 1st, 1916, by the Commission's order
of March 13, 1911.
That this strained and artificial construction of the section
cannot be allowed may be made clear by a brief consideration of the
terms and purposes of the two sections of the act.
The congressional purpose in enacting § 2 of the act is very
plain. At the time the act was passed, railroad carriers had in
service many box cars, requiring for their proper use secure
ladders and secure handholds or grab irons on their roofs at the
tops of such ladders, and the purpose of this section clearly is to
convert the general legal duty of exercising ordinary care to
provide such safety appliances and to keep them in repair into a
statutory, an absolute and imperative, duty of making them
"secure," and to enforce this duty by appropriately severe
penalties.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Ry. Co. v. United
States, 220 U. S. 559.
It is equally clear that the purpose of the third section is to
require that the safety appliances "provided for by section two of
this Act" shall ultimately conform to a standard to be prescribed
by the Interstate Commerce Commission -- that is, that they shall
be standardized, shall be of uniform size and character, and, so
far as ladders and handholds are concerned, shall be placed as
nearly as possible at a corresponding place on every car so that
employees who work always in haste, and often in darkness and
storm, may not be betrayed, to their injury or death, when they
instinctively reach for the only protection which can avail them
when confronted by such a crisis as often arises in their dangerous
service. It is for such emergencies that these safety appliances
are provided -- for service in those instant decisions upon which
the safety of life of limb of a man so often depends in this
perilous employment -- and therefore this law requires
Page 242 U. S. 467
that ultimately the location of these ladders and handholds
shall be absolutely fixed, so that the employee will know certainly
that night or day he will find them in like place and of like size
and usefulness on all cars, from whatever line of railway or
section of the country they may come. This highly important and
humane purpose must not be defeated by finesse of construction such
as is pressed upon our attention in the argument of this case.
To this primary purpose of protecting the life and limb of
employees is added the purpose of protecting the lives of
passengers and of securing the safety of property by requiring
uniform standards as to other equipment of cars, such as coupling
appliances, brakes, and the like.
To change these safety appliances on all the cars in the country
from what they were as contemplated by § 2 -- "secure," but
differing "in number, dimensions, location and manner of
application" -- to what they must be when standardized to meet the
requirements provided for in § 3 was regarded by Congress as a work
so great and so expensive that it wisely committed to the informed
discretion of the Interstate Commerce Commission the power and duty
of determining the length of time which the carriers should be
allowed in which to accomplish it. To give this discretion to the
Commission is the function, and the only function, of the proviso
of § 3, and the claim that, by construction, power may be found in
it to suspend § 2 is too forced and unnatural to be seriously
considered.
This reading of the two sections makes them stand together as an
expression of a consistent congressional purpose "to promote the
safety of employees and travelers on railroads" on and after July
1st, 1911, by requiring that the safety appliances described in § 2
of the act shall be secure and efficient from that date, and by
requiring, as § 3 provides, that these appliances shall be brought
as speedily as may be to a uniform standard of location, size,
Page 242 U. S. 468
and usefulness, to be prescribed by the Interstate Commerce
Commission.
While the question we have considered has not been presented to
this Court before in precisely the form in which we have it here,
yet § 2 of the act was treated by this Court as in full force as of
September 4, 1912, in
Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v.
Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, and
the Supreme Court of the State of Minnesota in
Coleman v.
Illinois Central R. Co., 132 Minn. 22, and the Supreme Court
of Iowa in
Cook v. Union Pacific Ry. Co., 158 N.W. 521,
while arriving at their conclusions by somewhat different analyses
of the sections of the Act of April 14, 1910, have given to them
precisely the meaning and effect which we are giving to them in
this decision. It results that the judgment of the Supreme Court of
Mississippi is
Affirmed.