FELA plaintiff gets her day in court against Amtrak

Today's case involves the Federal Employer's Liability Act, which allows federal employees to sue their employers who failed to provide them with a safe place to work. I do not believe New York has a counterpart, which means you have to seek workers' compensation for these injuries. FELA is one of the benefits of working for the federal government. The Court of Appeals says plaintiff has a case.

The case is Sierra v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., a summary order issued on November 17. National Railroad Passenger Corp is also known as Amtrak. Plaintiff suffered injuries while cleaning a bathroom on the train. 

The Court of Appeals (Lee, Perez and Merriam) opens its discussion with the following: "Any Amtrak passenger knows that passenger train bathrooms look quite different at the beginning of a trip compared to the end." I do not even want such an image in my head, but the suggestion is the Amtrak bathrooms are pretty nasty when the railroad trip reaches its conclusion. Plaintiff was responsible for cleaning the bathrooms after each journey. "As Sierra describes it, the only way to remove these stains and the smell is to '[s]crub the floor really good. Really wet. . . . Wet, wet, mop, mop, scrub really hard.' The goal? To 'leave the premises impeccable.'” This required her stand on a very wet floor, a potential hazard. While that approach is against Amtrak rules, her supervisors knew she was standing on the wet floors and never intervened. 

A relaxed standard guides these cases. As the Court of Appeals notes, "It 'has been accepted as settled law for several decades, that the standard to be applied by the jury in a FELA case 'is simply 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.'” That is not your usual negligence standard in slip-and-fall cases in state court. 

While the trial court dismissed the case on summary judgment on the basis that the record does not show that Amtrak had actual or constructive notice of the slippery conditions of the train bathrooms or that the methods required to clean the bathrooms created unsafe and slippery conditions, the Court of Appeals remands this case for trial because plaintiff testified that her supervisors knew how she was cleaning the bathrooms and never intervened. The jury will have to sort this out at trial.