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State Law

: Showmeblawgs

By stan_sipple

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Follow up: Missouri Supreme Court upholds FELA verdict after United States Supreme Court ordered the case remanded to clarify that the causation standards are the same for determining the defendant's negligence and the plaintiff's comparative negligence. The Missouri Court of Appeals had also upheld the verdict, ruling that the instructions the US Supreme Court had ruled erroneous did not lead to harmful error. Timothy Sorrell, Respondent v. Norfolk Southern Railway Company, Appellant.: SC88597 The Missouri Supreme Court however recommends that they promptly revise the Court's FELA instructions. Court summary: Norfolk Southern Railway Company trackman Timothy Sorrell was injured when the dump truck he was driving on a gravel road along the tracks approached another Norfolk truck and went off the gravel road and flipped onto its side. Sorrell sued Norfolk in a state circuit court under the federal employer's liability act. Sorrell and the other employee offered different views at trial of how the accident happened and who was at fault. The trial court gave an instruction based on Missouri approved instruction 32.07(B), which instructs the jury to find a plaintiff contributorily negligent if his negligence "directly contributed to cause" the injury. As to the railroad's negligence, the trial court instructed, as provided in Missouri approved instruction 24.01, that such negligence is measured by whether the railroad's negligence "contributed in whole or in part" to the injury. Without assessing a percentage of fault to Sorrell or Norfolk, the jury returned a $1.5 million general verdict for Sorrell, and the trial court entered judgment on the jury's verdict. Norfolk appeals.

AFFIRMED.

Court en banc holds: Because any negligence by Sorrell was a "direct" cause of his injuries, the wording of the contributory negligence instruction that Sorrell's negligence "directly contributed to cause his injury" could not have affected the trial's outcome and, therefore, any instructional error was harmless. To reverse on grounds of instructional error, the party claiming instructional error must establish that the instruction misdirected, mislead or confused the jury and that prejudice resulted. In Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Sorrell, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 799 (2007), the United States Supreme Court determined that the causation standard under the federal employer's liability act should be the same for both railroad negligence and for employee contributory negligence. Although that court declined to set out the proper causation standard, it did set out the methods other jurisdictions had adopted to apply a single standard. Even if the causation standards contained in the instructions in Sorrell's case were improper, any error was harmless. This Court agrees, however, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's concurring opinion in which she noted that sound jury instructions in cases under the act would resemble the model federal charges cited in that court's majority opinion. Id. at 814. Accordingly, this Court commends that opinion to this Court's civil instructions committee to develop approved jury instructions for use in Missouri.

Full post as published by Showmeblawgs on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).