Court rejects FELA case based on worker's claim of exhaustion
A Texas appellate court on Thursday rejected a worker's claim under the Federal Employers' Liability Act blaming a railway for his injuries from a fall that he attributed to fatigue from being forced to work too long.
Greg Hanson was working for the Fort Worth & Western Railroad Co. as a roadmaster when he allegedly suffered injuries in April 2019 in a fall from a rail truck, according to documents in Hanson v. Fort Worth & Western Railroad Co., filed in the Court of Appeals, Second Appellate District of Texas, in Fort Worth.
According to Mr. Hanson, dismounting from the truck was a regular part of his job, and he attributed his misstep not to unsafe physical conditions but to being “stressed and tired” from having already worked up to 17 hours that day. Mr. Hanson sued the railway under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, arguing that the railway had failed to provide a reasonably safe place to work by forcing him to continue working past the point of exhaustion. A trial court granted summary judgment for the railway.
The appeals court said that while Mr. Hanson made comments to the railroad before his accident about the number of hours he was being required to work, he made no complaint that he was so exhausted that he could not safely work or that he might injure himself.
“(W)e do conclude that for an employee to charge his employer with notice that the employee has reached the point that he feels he cannot work safely, the statement should convey more than the general complaint made by Mr. Hanson about the number of hours he had worked,” the court said.
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