“For nearly 40 years,” the Fifth Circuit explained, “Harold Huffman worked for the Union Pacific Railroad.”  In one of the growing list of injury-over-time suits, Mr. Huffman filed suit against Union Pacific under FELA, claiming he suffered from osteoarthritis to his knee as a result of his forty years of hard work.  After the jury found Union Pacific was negligent and their negligence caused Mr. Huffman’s injuries, Union Pacific appealed the jury’s finding of causation and won.

Mr. Huffman alleged that in all his time as a trainman, he had to lift heavy weights, walk on uneven surfaces, jump off (slowly) moving trains, bend over to grab switch levers, and lift switches.  As a result, he claimed, he suffered from osteoarthritis.  Union Pacific had developed a program to reduce “cumulative trauma” to trainmen, but Mr. Huffman claims he never had the benefit of the program.

Mr. Huffman alleged that Union Pacific knew, or should have known, that it was subjecting its employees to a greater chance of musculo-skeletal disorders by not taking steps to minimize the work load required.  Although Mr. Huffman neither had surgery nor a scheduled surgery at the time of trial, the jury in Lufkin, Texas awarded him $606,000 in damages.  The district court dismissed Union Pacific’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on causation.

Union Pacific appealed, arguing not negligence but causation.  In FELA (and the Jones Act), the plaintiff need only prove that the defendant’s negligence played the slightest role in the plaintiff’s injuries, according to the Supreme Court’s decision in CSX Transp., Inc. v. McBride, 131 S. Ct. 2630, 2644 (2011).

Despite this high burden, the Fifth Circuit reversed the jury’s conclusion.  It noted that, at Mr. Huffman’s weight (at 5’9″ and 300 pounds), he was fifteen times more likely to develop osteoarthritis.  The court listed all the evidence that Mr. Huffman’s work and the work of trainmen in general was linked to musculo-skeletal pain, but it noted there was no evidence that trainmen were likelier to suffer from osteoarthritis, The plaintiff’s ergonomics expert, Dr. Andres, testified that Mr. Huffman’s work increased the ergonomic risks to Mr. Huffman’s lower limbs, but did not specifically mention osteoarthritis.  Even under the loose FELA standard, the Fifth Circuit held that “[m]usculoskeletal disorder is too broad a category, and the evidence introduced too general, for jurors to have a basis on which to infer even the minimal degree of causation required.

We wish to be clear about what is missing. Jurors have wide latitude in FELA cases, and the quantum of causation that is required is low. Jurors still may not simply guess. Evidence that work performed by trainmen increased the risk of musculoskeletal disorders if not performed properly never identified osteoarthritis in the knees as one of those disorders that could result. The path from worker injury to employer liability was too broken in this record to allow juror common sense to travel it.”

Judge Dennis dissented in no uncertain terms, arguing that the panel abandoned the McBride causation standard for its own, far stricter standard.  He said the panel was inadequately deferential to the jury, and that there was more than enough evidence to support the jury’s conclusion that osteoarthritis is, in fact, a musculo-skeletal injury to the extremities.  Judge Dennis noted that in the Fifth Circuit, the standard for reversing a jury is strict–only if there is no evidence can the court overrule the jury.  Because there was some evidence, Judge Dennis concluded, it was not the panel’s role to weigh the worth of the jury’s finding.

The Huffman decision is arguably contrary to the Fifth Circuit’s earlier decision in Clark v. Kellogg Brown & Root LLC.  There, Clark filed suit under the Jones Act and alleged he developed leukemia from exposure to benzene.  The district court found Kellogg Brown liable under the Jones Act and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.  Chief Judge Jones offered a brief concurring opinion, noting that the causation standard was the featherweight FELA standard.  Clark was decided before CSX v. McBride, but the Fifth Circuit already used the featherlight standard in Jones Act/FELA before the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision.

Author:  Harry Morse