Coray, Ancillary Administrator, v. Southern Pacific Co. (335 U.S. 520)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 3, 1949 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 335 U.S. 520 · 69 S. Ct. 275
- Decided
- January 3, 1949
- Term
- October Term 1948
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Black
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Black delivered the opinion of the Court. This action was brought in a Utah state court under the Federal Safety Appliance and Federal Employers’ Liability Acts to recover damages for the death of Frank Lucus, an employee of the respondent railroad. The decedent’s death occurred when a one-man flat-top motor-driven track car crashed into the back end of an eighty-two-car freight train on a main-line track at a point near Lemay, Utah. Both train and motorcar were being operated in an eastward direction on railroad business. The train unexpectedly stopped just before the crash occurred because the air in its brake lines escaped, thereby locking the brakes. The air had escaped because of a violation of the Federal Safety Appliance Act in that the threads on a valve were so badly worn that a nut became disconnected. When the brakes locked, the motorcar was several hundred feet behind the freight train moving at about the same rate as the train, not an excessive rate under ordinary circumstances. The motorcar was equipped with brakes which had they been applied could have stopped the car within a distance of about one hundred feet. But the decedent who was in control of the car did not apply the brakes. Apparently he and another employee with him were looking backward toward a block signal and therefore did not know the train had stopped. Despite the proof that the…
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