Helpful Hints
- (1) You can search the entire content of Dean’s by phrase or by individual words. Just type your keywords into the search box and then pull down the search icon on the right and choose the option you need: search by word or by phrase or reset the content.
- (2) Double click on a word in the content of a definition, and if the word is listed as a keyword in Dean’s, it will look that word up.
- (3) You can use the search function to help jump the scrolling function. Simply type the first 2-3 letters into the search box then hit enter on your keyboard and the scroll will go to those Keywords that begin with those letters and allow you to scroll from there.
The Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 45 U.S.C. § 51 et seq. does not incorporate 'proximate cause' standards developed in nonstatutory common-law tort actions. The charge proper in FELA cases simply tracks the language Congress employed, informing juries that a defendant railroad caused or contributed to a plaintiff employee's injury if the railroad's negligence played any part in bringing about the injury.
The railroad business was exceptionally hazardous at the dawn of the twentieth century. As we have recounted, 'the physical dangers of railroading ... resulted in the death or maiming of thousands of workers every year,' Consolidated Rail Corporation v. Gottshall, 512 U.S. 532, 542, 114 S.Ct. 2396, 129 L.Ed.2d 427 (1994), including 281,645 casualties in the year 1908 alone, S.Rep. No. 61-432, p. 2 (1910). Enacted that same year in an effort to 'shif[t] part of the human overhead of doing business from employees to their employers,' Gottshall, 512 U.S., at 542, 114 S.Ct. 2396 (internal quotation marks omitted), FELA prescribes:'Every common carrier by railroad... shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier ... for such injury or death resulting in whole or in ...
