CSX Transp., Inc. v. McBride, 564 U.S. 685 (2011)
This case concerned the standard of causation applicable in cases arising under the Federal Employers' Liability Act ("FELA"), 45 U.S.C. 51 et seq., which rendered railroads liable for employees' injuries or deaths "resulting in whole or in part from [carrier] negligence." Respondent, a locomotive engineer with petitioner, an interstate railroad, sustained a debilitating hand injury and subsequently filed suit under the FELA. At issue was whether the causation instruction endorsed by the Seventh Circuit was proper in FELA cases where that instruction did not include the term "proximate cause," but did tell the jury defendant's negligence must "pla[y] a part-no matter how small-in bringing about the [plaintiff's] injury." In accord with the text and purpose of the Act, the Court's decision in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., and the uniform view of federal appellate courts, the Court held that the Act did not incorporate "proximate cause" standards developed in nonstatutory common law tort actions. The Court held that the charge proper in FELA cases simply tracked the language Congress employed, informing juries that a defendant railroad caused or contributed to a plaintiff employee's injury if the railroad's negligence played any part in bringing about the injury. Accordingly, the judgment of the Seventh Circuit was affirmed.
SYLLABUS
OCTOBER TERM, 2010
CSX TRANSP., INC. V. MCBRIDE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC. v. McBRIDE
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit
No. 10–235. Argued March 28, 2011—Decided June 23, 2011
Respondent McBride, a locomotive engineer with petitioner CSX Transportation, Inc., an interstate railroad, sustained a debilitating hand injury while switching railroad cars. He filed suit under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), which holds railroads liable for employees’ injuries “resulting in whole or in part from [carrier] negligence.” 45 U. S. C. §51. McBride alleged that CSX negligently (1) required him to use unsafe switching equipment and (2) failed to train him to operate that equipment. A verdict for McBride would be in order, the District Court instructed, if the jury found that CSX’s negligence “caused or contributed to” his injury. The court declined CSX’s request for additional charges requiring McBride to “show that … [CSX’s] negligence was a proximate cause of the injury” and defining “proximate cause” as “any cause which, in natural or probable sequence, produced the injury complained of.” Instead, relying on Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500, the court gave the Seventh Circuit’s pattern FELA instruction: “Defendant ‘caused or contributed to’ Plaintiff’s injury if Defendant’s negligence played a part—no matter how small—in bringing about the injury.” The jury returned a verdict for McBride.
On appeal, CSX renewed its objection to the failure to instruct on proximate cause, now defining the phrase to require a “direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged.” The appeals court, however, approved the District Court’s instruction and affirmed its judgment for McBride. Because Rogers had relaxed the proximate cause requirement in FELA cases, the court said, an instruction that simply paraphrased Rogers’ language could not be declared erroneous.
Held: The judgment is affirmed.
598 F. 3d 388, affirmed.
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to all but Part III–A, concluding, in accord with FELA’s text and purpose, Rogers, and the uniform view of the federal appellate courts, that FELA does not incorporate stock “proximate cause” standards developed in nonstatutory common-law tort actions. The charge proper in FELA cases simply tracks the language Congress employed, informing juries that a defendant railroad “caused or contributed to” a railroad worker’s injury “if [the railroad’s] negligence played a part—no matter how small—in bringing about the injury.” That, indeed, is the test Congress prescribed for proximate causation in FELA cases. Pp. 4–14, 16–19.
(a) CSX’s interpretation of Rogers is not persuasive. Pp. 4–12.
(1) Given FELA’s “broad” causation language, Urie v. Thompson, 337 U. S. 163, 181, and Congress’ “humanitarian” and “remedial goal[s]” in enacting the statute, FELA’s causation standard is “relaxed” compared to that applicable in common-law tort litigation, Consolidated Rail Corporation v. Gottshall, 512 U. S. 532, 542–543. Rogers described that relaxed standard as “whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought.” 352 U. S., at 506. Because the District Court’s instruction tracked Rogers’ language, the instruction was plainly proper so long as Rogers actually prescribes the causation definition applicable under FELA. See Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172. CSX, however, contends that Rogers was a narrowly focused decision that did not displace common-law formulations of “proximate cause.” Drawing largely on Justice Souter’s concurrence in Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Sorrell, 549 U. S. 158, 173, CSX urges that Rogers’ “any part … in producing the injury” test displaced only common-law restrictions on recovery for injuries involving contributory negligence or other multiple causes, but did not address the requisite directness of a cause. Pp. 4–6.
(2) In Rogers, the employee was burning vegetation that lined his employer’s railroad tracks. A passing train fanned the flames, which spread to the top of the culvert where he was standing. Attempting to escape, he slipped and fell on the sloping gravel covering the culvert, sustaining serious injuries. 352 U. S., at 501–503. The state-court jury returned a verdict for him, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed. Even if the railroad had been negligent in failing to maintain a flat surface, the court reasoned, the employee was at fault because of his lack of attention to the spreading fire. As the fire “was something extraordinary, unrelated to, and disconnected from the incline of the gravel,” the court found that “plaintiff’s injury was not the natural and probable consequence of any negligence of defendant.” Ibid. This Court reversed. FELA, this Court affirmed, did not incorporate any traditional common-law formulation of “proximate causation[,] which [requires] the jury [to] find that the defendant’s negligence was the sole, efficient, producing cause of injury.” Id., at 506. Whether the railroad’s negligent act was the “immediate reason” for the fall, the Court added, was “irrelevant.” Id., at 503. The Court then announced its “any part … in producing the injury” test, id., at 506.
Rogers is most sensibly read as a comprehensive statement of FELA’s causation standard. The State Supreme Court there acknowledged that a FELA injury might have multiple causes, but considered the respondent railroad’s part too indirect to establish the requisite causation. That is the very reasoning this Court rejected in Rogers. It is also the reasoning CSX asks this Court to resurrect. The interpretation adopted today is informed by the statutory history, see Trainmen v. Virginia ex rel. Virginia State Bar, 377 U. S. 1, 3, the precedents on which Rogers drew, see, e.g., Coray v. Southern Pacific Co., 335 U. S. 520, 523–524, this Court’s subsequent decisions, see, e.g., Ferguson v. Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc., 352 U. S. 521, 523–524, the decisions of every Court of Appeals that reviews FELA cases, and the overwhelming majority of state courts and scholars. This understanding of Rogers “has been accepted as settled law for several decades.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21, 32. To discard or restrict the instruction now would ill serve stare decisis. Pp. 6–12.
(b) CSX nonetheless worries that the Rogers “any part” instruction opens the door to unlimited liability, inviting juries to impose liability on the basis of “but for” causation. A half century’s experience with Rogers gives little cause for concern: CSX has not identified even one trial in which the instruction generated an absurd or untoward award.
FELA’s “in whole or in part” language is straightforward. “[R]easonable foreseeability of harm is an essential ingredient of [FELA] negligence,” Gallick v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 372 U. S. 108, 117 (emphasis added). If negligence is proved, however, and is shown to have “played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury,” Rogers, 352 U. S., at 506, then the carrier is answerable in damages even if “ ‘the extent of the [injury] or the manner in which it occurred’ ” was not “[p]robable” or “foreseeable.” Gallick, 372 U. S., at 120–121, and n. 8. Properly instructed on negligence and causation, and told, as is standard practice in FELA cases, to use their “common sense” in reviewing the evidence, juries would have no warrant to award damages in far out “but for” scenarios, and judges would have no warrant to submit such cases to the jury. Pp. 12–14, 16–19.
Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–A. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined that opinion in full, and Thomas, J., joined as to all but Part III–A. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, JJ., joined.
OPINION OF THE COURT
CSX TRANSP., INC. V. MCBRIDE
564 U. S. ____ (2011)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NO. 10-235
CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC., PETITIONER v. ROBERT McBRIDE on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit [June 23, 2011] Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–A.*
ROBERTS, C. J., DISSENTING
CSX TRANSP., INC. V. MCBRIDE
564 U. S. ____ (2011)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NO. 10-235
CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC., PETITIONER v. ROBERT McBRIDE on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit [June 23, 2011] Chief Justice Roberts, with whom Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Alito join, dissenting. “It is a well established principle of [the common] law, that in all cases of loss we are to attribute it to the proximate cause, and not to any remote cause: causa proxima non remota spectatur.” Waters v. Merchants’ Louisville Ins. Co., 11 Pet. 213, 223 (1837) (Story, J.). The Court today holds that this principle does not apply to actions under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), and that those suing under that statute may recover for injuries that were not proximately caused by the negligence of their employers. This even though we have held that FELA generally follows the common law, unless the Act expressly provides otherwise; even though FELA expressly abrogated common law rules in four other respects, but said nothing about proximate cause; and even though our own cases, for 50 years after the passage of FELA, repeatedly recognized that proximate cause was required for recovery under that statute. The Court is wrong to dispense with that familiar element of an action seeking recovery for negligence, an ele-ment “generally thought to be a necessary limitation on liability,” Exxon Co., U. S. A. v. Sofec, Inc., 517 U. S. 830, 838 (1996). The test the Court would substitute—whether negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury—is no limit at all. It is simply “but for” causation. Nothing in FELA itself, or our decision in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500 (1957), supports such a boundless theory of liability. I respectfully dissent. I “Unlike a typical workers’ compensation scheme, which provides relief without regard to fault, … FELA provides a statutory cause of action sounding in negligence.” Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Sorrell, 549 U. S. 158, 165 (2007). When Congress creates such a federal tort, “we start from the premise” that Congress “adopts the background of general tort law.” Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5). With respect to FELA in particular, we have explained that “[a]bsent express language to the contrary, the elements of a FELA claim are determined by reference to the common law.” Sorrell, supra, at 165–166; see Urie v. Thompson, 337 U. S. 163, 182 (1949). Recovery for negligence has always required a showing of proximate cause. “ ‘In a philosophical sense, the con-sequences of an act go forward to eternity.’ ” Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U. S. 258, 266, n. 10 (1992) (quoting W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts §41, p. 264 (5th ed. 1984)). Law, however, is not philosophy, and the concept of proximate cause developed at common law in response to the perceived need to distinguish “but for” cause from those more direct causes of injury that can form the basis for liability at law. The plurality breaks no new ground in criticizing the variety of formulations of the concept of proximate cause, ante, at 14–15; courts, commentators, and first-year law students have been doing that for generations. See Exxon, supra, at 838. But it is often easier to disparage the product of centuries of common law than to devise a plausible substitute—which may explain why Congress did not at-tempt to do so in FELA. Proximate cause is hardly the only enduring common law concept that is useful despite its imprecision, see ante, at 14. It is in good company with proof beyond a reasonable doubt, necessity, willfulness, and unconscionability—to name just a few. Proximate cause refers to the basic requirement that before recovery is allowed in tort, there must be “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged,” Holmes, 503 U. S., at 268. It excludes from the scope of liability injuries that are “too remote,” “purely contingent,” or “indirect[ ].” Id., at 268, 271, 274. Recognizing that liability must not attach to “every conceivable harm that can be traced to alleged wrongdoing,” proximate cause requires a “causal connection between the wrong and the injury,” Associated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc. v. Carpenters, 459 U. S. 519, 536, 533, n. 26 (1983), that is not so “tenuous … that what is claimed to be consequence is only fortuity,” Exxon, supra, at 838 (internal quotation marks omitted). It limits liability at some point before the want of a nail leads to loss of the kingdom. When FELA was passed, as now, “[t]he question whether damage in a given case is proximate or remote [was] one of great importance… . [T]he determination of it determines legal right,” 1 T. Street, Foundations of Legal Liability 110 (1906) (reprint 1980). FELA expressly abrogated common law tort principles in four specific ways. See Sorrell, supra, at 166, 168; Con-solidated Rail Corporation v. Gottshall, 512 U. S. 532, 542–543 (1994). As enacted in 1908, the Act abolished the common law contributory negligence rule, which barred plaintiffs whose negligence had contributed to their injuries from recovering for the negligence of another. See Act of Apr. 22, §3, 35 Stat. 66. FELA also abandoned the so-called fellow-servant rule, §1, prohibited an assumption of risk defense in certain cases, §4, and barred employees from contractually releasing their employers from liability, §5. But “[o]nly to the extent of these explicit statutory alterations is FELA an avowed departure from the rules of the common law.” Gottshall, supra, at 544 (internal quotation marks omitted). FELA did not abolish the familiar requirement of proximate cause. Because “Congress ex-pressly dispensed with [certain] common-law doctrines” in FELA but “did not deal at all with [other] equally well-established doctrine[s],” I do not believe that “Congress intended to abrogate [the other] doctrine[s] sub silentio.” Monessen Southwestern R. Co. v. Morgan, 486 U. S. 330, 337–338 (1988). We have applied the standard requirement of proximate cause to actions under federal statutes where the text did not expressly provide for it. See Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 544 U. S. 336, 342–346 (2005) (securities fraud); Holmes, supra, at 268–270 (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act); Associated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc., supra, at 529–535 (Clayton Act); cf. Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy, 460 U. S. 766, 774 (1983) (“the terms ‘environmental ef-fect’ and ‘environmental impact’ in [the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 should] be read to include a requirement of a reasonably close causal relationship between a change in the physical environment and the effect at issue … . like the familiar doctrine of proximate cause from tort law”). The Court does not explicitly rest its argument on its own reading of FELA’s text. The jury instruction on causation it approves, however, derives from Section 1 of FELA, 45 U. S. C. §51. See ante, at 1, 16–17. But nothing in Section 1 is similar to the “express language” Congress employed elsewhere in FELA when it wanted to abrogate a common law rule, Sorrell, supra, at 165–166. See, e.g., §53 (“the fact that the employee may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery”); §54 (“employee shall not be held to have assumed the risks of his employment”). As the very first section of the statute, Section 1 simply outlines who could be sued by whom and for what types of injuries. It provides that “[e]very common carrier by railroad … shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier … for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier.” §51. The Court’s theory seems to be that the words “in whole or in part” signal a departure from the historic requirement of proximate cause. But those words served a very different purpose. They did indeed mark an important departure from a common law principle, but it was the principle of contributory negligence—not proximate cause. As noted, FELA abolished the defense of contributory negligence; the “in whole or in part” language simply re-flected the fact that the railroad would remain liable even if its negligence was not the sole cause of injury. See Sorrell, 549 U. S., at 170. The Congress that was so clear when it was abolishing common law limits on recovery elsewhere in FELA did not abrogate the fundamental principle of proximate cause in the oblique manner the Court suggests. “[I]f Congress had intended such a sea change” in negligence principles “it would have said so clearly.” Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 14). The language the Court adopts as an instruction on causation requires only that negligence have “ ‘played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury.’ ” Ante, at 17 (quoting Rogers, 352 U. S., at 506; emphasis deleted); see also ante, at 18–19 (“Juries in such cases are properly instructed that a defendant railroad ‘caused or contributed to’ a railroad worker’s injury ‘if [the railroad’s] negligence played a part—no matter how small—in bringing about the injury’ ”). If that is proved, “then the carrier is answerable in damages even if the extent of the [injury] or the manner in which it occurred was not ‘[p]robable’ or ‘foreseeable.’ ” Ante, at 17 (some internal quotation marks omitted). There is nothing in that language that requires anything other than “but for” cause. The terms “even the slightest” and “no matter how small” make clear to juries that even the faintest whisper of “but for” causation will do. At oral argument, counsel for McBride explained that the correct standard for recovery under FELA is “but-for plus a relaxed form of legal cause.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 44. There is no “plus” in the rule the Court announces today. In this very case defense counsel was free to argue “but for” cause pure and simple to the jury. In closing, counsel informed the jury: “What we also have to show is defendant’s negligence caused or contributed to [McBride’s] injury. It never would have happened but for [CSX] giving him that train.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 67a (emphasis added). At certain points in its opinion, the Court acknowledges that “[i]njuries have countless causes,” not all of which “should give rise to legal liability.” Ante, at 5. But the causation test the Court embraces contains no limit on causation at all. II This Court, from the time of FELA’s enactment, understood FELA to require plaintiffs to prove that an employer’s negligence “is a proximate cause of the accident,” Davis v. Wolfe, 263 U. S. 239, 243 (1923). See, e.g., ibid. (“The rule clearly deducible from [prior] cases is that … an employee cannot recover … if the [employer’s] failure … is not a proximate cause of the accident … but merely creates an incidental condition or situation in which the accident, otherwise caused, results in such injury”); Carter v. Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay R. Co., 338 U. S. 430, 435 (1949) (“if the jury determines that the defendant’s breach is a contributory proximate cause of injury, it may find for the plaintiff” (internal quotation marks omitted)); O’Donnell v. Elgin, J. & E. R. Co., 338 U. S. 384, 394 (1949) (“plaintiff was entitled to a[n] … instruction … which rendered defendant liable for injuries proximately resulting therefrom”). A comprehensive treatise written shortly after Congress enacted FELA confirmed that “the plaintiff must … show that the alleged negligence was the proximate cause of the damage” in order to recover. 1 M. Roberts, Federal Li-abilities of Carriers §538, p. 942 (1918). As Justice Souter has explained, for the half century after the enactment of FELA, the Court “consistently recognized and applied proximate cause as the proper standard in FELA suits.” Sorrell, supra, at 174 (concurring opinion). No matter. For the Court, time begins in 1957, with our opinion in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500. That opinion, however, “left this law where it was.” Sor-rell, supra, at 174 (Souter, J., concurring). A jury in that case awarded Rogers damages against his railroad employer, but the Supreme Court of Missouri reversed the jury verdict. As the Court explains today, we suggested in Rogers that there were “two potential readings” of the lower court’s opinion and that both were wrong. Ante, at 7. In doing so, we clarified the consequences of FELA’s elimination of the common law contributory negligence rule. We did not do what Congress chose not to do, and abrogate the rule of proximate cause. First, we rejected the idea “that [Rogers’s] conduct was the sole cause of his mishap.” 352 U. S., at 504 (emphasis added); contra, Rogers v. Thompson, 284 S. W. 2d 467, 472 (Mo. 1955) (while “[Rogers] was confronted by an emergency[,] … it was an emergency brought about by himself”). There were, we explained, “probative facts from which the jury could find that [the railroad] was or should have been aware of conditions which created a likelihood that [Rogers] … would suffer just such an injury as he did.” 352 U. S., at 503. We noted that “[c]ommon experience teaches both that a passing train will fan the flames of a fire, and that a person suddenly enveloped in flames and smoke will instinctively react by retreating from the danger.” Ibid. In referring to this predictable sequence of events, we described—in familiar terms—sufficient evi-dence of proximate cause. We therefore held that the railroad’s negligence could have been a cause of Rogers’s injury regardless of whether “the immediate reason” why Rogers slipped was the railroad’s negligence in permitting gravel to remain on the surface or some other cause. Ibid. (emphasis added). Rogers thereby clarified that, under a statute in which employer and employee could both be proximate causes of an injury, a railroad’s negligence need not be the sole or last cause in order to be proximate. That is an application of proximate cause, not a repudiation of it. See Street 111 (“a cause may be sufficiently near in law to the damage to be considered its effective legal cause without by any means being the nearest or most proximate to the causes which contribute of the injury”); 1 D. Dobbs, Law of Torts §180, p. 445 (2001). We then considered a second interpretation. The Missouri Supreme Court’s opinion could alternatively be read as having held that Rogers’s “conduct was at least as probable a cause for his mishap as any negligence of the [railroad],” and that—in those circumstances—“there was no case for the jury.” 352 U. S., at 505 (emphasis added). If this was the principle the court applied below, it was also wrong and for many of the same reasons. Under a comparative negligence scheme in which multiple causes may act concurrently, we clarified that a railroad’s negligence need not be the “sole, efficient, produc- ing cause of injury,” id., at 506. The question was simply whether “employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury.” Ibid. “It does not matter,” we continued, “that, from the evidence, the jury may also with reason, on grounds of probability, attribute the result to other causes, including the employee’s contributory negligence.” Ibid. (emphasis added). The Court today takes the “any part, even the slightest” language out of context and views it as a rejection of proximate cause. But Rogers was talking about contributory negligence—it said so—and the language it chose confirms just that. “Slight” negligence was familiar usage in this context. The statute immediately preceding FELA, passed just two years earlier in 1906, moved part way from contributory to comparative negligence. It provided that “the fact that the employee may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery where his contrib-utory negligence was slight and that of the employer was gross in comparison.” Act of June 11, 1906, §2, 34 Stat. 232. Other statutes similarly made this halfway stop on the road from contributory to pure comparative negligence, again using the term “slight.” See Dobbs §201, at 503 (“One earlier [version of comparative fault] … allowed the negligent plaintiff to recover if the plaintiff’s negligence was slight and the defendant’s gross… . Modern comparative negligence law works differently, reducing the plaintiff’s recovery in proportion to the plaintiff’s fault”); V. Schwartz, Comparative Negligence §2.01[b][2], p. 33 (5th ed. 2010) (a “major form of modified comparative negligence is the ‘slight-gross’ system”); id. §3.04[b], at 75. In 1908, FELA completed the transition to pure comparative negligence with respect to rail workers. See Dobbs §201, at 503. Under FELA, it does not matter whose negligence was “slight” or “gross.” The use of the term “even the slightest” in Rogers makes perfect sense when the decision is understood to be about multiple causes—not about how direct any particular cause must be. See Sorrell, 549 U. S., at 175 (Souter, J., concurring) (pertinent language concerned “multiplicity of causations,” not “the necessary directness of … causation”). The Court views Rogers as “describ[ing] the test for proximate causation” under FELA, ante, at 13 (internal quotation marks omitted), but Rogers itself says nothing of the sort. See 352 U. S., at 506 (describing its test as “the test of a jury case” (emphasis added)). Rogers did not set forth a novel standard for proximate cause—much less an instruction designed to guide jurors in determining causation. Indeed, the trial court in Rogers used the term “proximate cause” in its jury instruction and directed the jury to find that Rogers could not recover if his injuries “were not directly … caused by” the railroad’s negligence. Id., at 505, n. 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Our opinion quoted that instruction, ibid., but “took no issue with [it] in this respect,” Sorrell, supra, at 176 (Souter, J., concurring). A few of our cases have characterized Rogers as hold- ing that “a relaxed standard of causation applies under FELA.” Gottshall, 512 U. S., at 543; see Crane v. Cedar Rapids & Iowa City R. Co., 395 U. S. 164, 166 (1969). Fair enough; but these passing summations of Rogers do not alter its holding. FELA did, of course, change common law rules relating to causation in one respect: Under FELA, a railroad’s negligence did not have to be the exclusive cause of an injury. See Gottshall, supra, at 542–543 (“Congress did away with several common-law tort defenses … . Specifically, the statute … rejected the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of that of comparative negligence”). And, unlike under FELA’s predecessor, the proportionate degree of the employee’s negligence would not necessarily bar his recovery. But we have never held—until today—that FELA entirely eliminates proximate cause as a limit on liability. III The Court is correct that the federal courts of appeals have read Rogers to support the adoption of instructions like the one given here. But we do not resolve questions such as the one before us by a show of hands. See Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources, 532 U. S. 598, 605 (2001); id., at 621 (Scalia, J., concurring) (“The dissent’s insistence that we defer to the ‘clear majority’ of Circuit opinion is particularly peculiar in the present case, since that majority has been nurtured and preserved by our own misleading dicta”); cf. McNally v. United States, 483 U. S. 350, 365 (1987) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (pointing out that “[e]very court to consider the matter” had disagreed with the majority’s holding). In addition, the Court discounts the views of those state courts of last resort that agree FELA did not relegate proximate cause to the dustbin. Those courts either reject the position the Court adopts today or suggest that FELA does not entirely eliminate proximate cause. See Ballard v. Union Pacific R. Co., 279 Neb. 638, 644, 781 N. W. 2d 47, 53 (2010) (“an employee must prove the employer’s negligence and that the alleged negligence is a proximate cause of the employee’s injury”); CSX Transp., Inc. v. Miller, 46 So. 3d 434, 450 (Ala. 2010) (“the jury in this case was properly instructed by the trial court that [respondent] could not be compensated for any injury not proximately caused by [petitioner’s] negligence”), cf. id., at 461 (quoting Rogers); Raab v. Utah R. Co., 2009 UT 61, ¶20, 221 P. 3d 219, 225 (“Rogers did not speak to the issue of proximate cause”); Gardner v. CSX Transp., Inc., 201 W. Va. 490, 500, 498 S. E. 2d 473, 483 (1997) (“we hold that to prevail on a claim under [FELA] … a plaintiff employee must establish that the defendant employer acted negligently and that such negligence contributed proximately, in whole or in part, to plaintiff’s injury”); Snipes v. Chicago, Central, & Pacific R. Co., 484 N. W. 2d 162, 164–165 (Iowa 1992) (stating that “[r]ecovery under the FELA requires an injured employee to prove that the defendant employer was negligent and that the negligence proximately caused, in whole or in part, the accident,” while noting that Rogers’s “threshold for recovery” is “low”); Marazzato v. Burlington No. R. Co., 249 Mont. 487, 491, 817 P. 2d 672, 675 (1991) (“plaintiff has the burden of proving that defendant’s negligence was the proximate cause in whole or in part of the plaintiff’s [death]”); Reed v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 171 Ohio St. 433, 436, 171 N. E. 2d 718, 721–722 (1961) (“such violation could not legally amount to a proximate cause of the injury to plaintiff’s leg”); see also Hager v. Norfolk & W. R. Co., No. 87553, 2006 WL 3634373, *6 (Ohio App., Dec. 14, 2006) (“the standard for proximate cause is broader under FELA than the common law” (internal quotation marks omitted)). If nothing more, the views of these courts show that the question whether—and to what extent—FELA dispenses with proximate cause is not as “settled” as the Court would have it, ante, at 12 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under these circumstances, it seems important to correct an interpretation of our own case law that has run, so to speak, off its own rails.