FELA does not provide for apportionment of damages (asbestos related)

The statutory language supports the trial court’s under-standing that the FELA does not provide for apportionment of damages between railroad and non railroad causes. Section 1 of the Act makes common carrier railroads “liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce . . . for such injury . . . resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of such carrier.” 45 U. S. C. §51. The claimants here suffer from asbestosis (an “injury”), which is linked to their employment with Norfolk and “result[ed] in whole or in part from . . . negligence” by Norfolk. Norfolk is therefore “liable in damages . . . for such in-jury.”

Nothing in the statutory text instructs that the amount of damages payable by a liable employer bears reduction when the negligence of a third party also contributed in part to the injury-in-suit. Norfolk maintains that the statutory language conveying that a rail-road is liable only for injuries an employee sustains “while he is employed by such carrier” makes it clear that railroads are not liable for employee injuries resulting from outside causes.

Placed in context, however, the clause on which Norfolk relies clarifies that the FELA’s reach is limited to injuries sustained by railroad employees while the employees are themselves engaged in interstate commerce; the provision does not speak to cases in which an injury has multiple causes, some related to railroad employment and others unrelated to that employment. Moreover, interpreting §1 to require apportionment would put that provision in tension with the rest of the statute.

Several of the FELA’s provisions expand a railroad’s liability by abolishing common-law defenses that limited employees’ ability to re-cover against their employers. And although the Act expressly directs apportionment of responsibility between employer and em-ployee based on comparative fault, it expressly prescribes no other apportionment. Pp. 21–23.

Courtesy of Supreme Court of the United States NORFOLK & WESTERN RAILWAY CO. v. AYERS ET AL