South Buffalo Railway Company v. Ahern/Opinion of the Court

Disability awards by the New York Workmen's Compensation Board to an interstate railroad employee precipitate this attack on § 113 of that state's Workmen's Compensation Law, McK.Consol.Laws, § 67, as unconstitutionally conflicting with the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq. While employed as a switchman by the appellant Railway, Thomas J. Ahern in July 1944 suffered a coronary occlusion as a result of unusual physical exertion in attempting to 'throw a stuck switch' in the Railway's Lackawanna, New York, yards. On January 15, 1945, he filed a claim with the New York Workmen's Compensation Board, asserting disability caused by injuries sustained in the regular course of his employment. The Railway controverted the claim solely on the grounds that his injuries were not in fact accidental, and that his disability was not causally related to the injuries alleged. A referee, after hearing evidence, resolved these issues in the claimant's favor and in September 1945 awarded him compensation at the rate of $28 per week from the date of the accident. The Board denied the Railway's application for review and affirmed the referee's determination. In 1946 and the year following, the Board entered two further temporary disability awards. A self-insured employer, appellant in accordance with the Board's orders and without appeal to the courts of the state continued biweekly payments to Ahern until December 20, 1948. On January 3, 1949, Ahern died of his heart condition. At a subsequent hearing held shortly thereafter to determine a final disability award, the widow, appellee here, was requested to file a death claim. At that point appellant for the first time disputed the Board's jurisdiction over the subject matter of the proceeding and offered to introduce proof in support. The referee rejected appellant's proffer and rendered a disability award for the two weeks preceding Ahern's death. Over appellant's contention that the claimant was employed 'in interstate commerce' so that the applicability of the Federal Employers' Liability Act deprived the Workmen's Compensation Board of jurisdiction, the Board denied a petition for review. The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court upheld the award, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. This decision by the highest court of the state invoked § 113 of New York's Workmen's Compensation Law which in relevant part provides that awards 'may be made by the board in respect of injuries subject to the admiralty or other federal laws in case the claimant, the employer and the insurance carrier waive their admiralty or interstate commerce rights and remedies * *  * .' (Emphasis added.) Appellant's serious attacks on the constitutionality of the statute as here applied and related problems important to the administration of the Federal Employers' Liability Act prompted us to note probable jurisdiction of this case.

Collision of New York's statute with the Federal Employers' Liability Act is the crux of appellant's constitutional contentions. All agree that the injured employee, had he pursued his federal remedy, would have met the 'interstate commerce' requirements of that Act. But we are told that, under the New York Court of Appeals' decision, § 113 of the state Workmen's Compensation Law may translate the mere payment and acceptance of a single interlocutory compensation award into an irrevocable agreement by employer and employee to forsake their federal rights and submit their controversy to the state Board, a tribunal not only without jurisdiction but whose rules of liability clash with the uniform scheme intended by Congress in the Federal Employers' Liability Act. That being so, appellant urges, the New York Court of Appeals' construction of § 113 unconstitutionally authorizes the Workmen's Compensation Board to invade a field foreclosed by governing federal legilation.

We do not think that the Court of Appeals roved so far afield. Rather than coin sweeping generalities, the court held that New York permitted the Board to render compensatory awards for employees engaged in interstate commerce only if the parties voluntarily had so agreed and 'if there has been no overreaching or fraud'. Accordingly, the court scrupulously traced the significant factual elements in this case: Appellant from the outset was represented by able counsel well versed in the nature of its liabilities toward injured employees; it utilized the Board's administrative machinery at several hearings resulting in at least four separate awards; it made payments for four and a half years in accordance with the Board's directions, choosing not to contest the authority of the Board; it sought no judicial relief from any award save the last, when the employee's remedy under the Federal Employers' Liability Act had lapsed. In view of these facts the court concluded that manifestly the parties had agreed to invoke § 113, a purely 'per missive statute,' thereby empowering the Workmen's Compensation Board to act. And, in effect, appellant's course of conduct over the years estopped it from now asserting a flaw in the bargain: 'we can conceive of no sound reason why the employer should be permitted to urge his Federal rights at this late date.'

We do not doubt that the Federal Employers' Liability Act, supplanting a patchwork of state legislation with a nationwide uniform system of liberal remedial rules, displaces any state law trenching on the province of the Act. State legislatures, for example, may not intrude into the federal Act's interstate commerce perimeter to destroy uniformity by arbitrarily presuming the renunciation of rights which the Act confers, or by compelling parties to elect between their federal remedies and an alternative state compensation plan. Erie R. Co. v. Winfield, 1917, 244 U.S. 170, 37 S.Ct. 556, 61 L.Ed. 1057. The New York Court of Appeals, however, manifested meticulous care to avoid collision; it construed § 113 of the Workmen's Compensation Law as a mere legislative authorization, permitting the Board to effectuate private agreements for compromising a federal controversy by resort to an impartial local umpire-'that is all that section 113 of the Workmen's Compensation Law purports to accomplish.' The difference between coercion and permission is decisive; New York's jurisdictional grant, so confined, does not transgress.

To be sure, peculiarities of local law may not gnaw at rights rooted in federal legislation. American Railway Express Co. v. Levee, 1923, 263 U.S. 19, 21, 44 S.Ct. 11, 12, 68 L.Ed. 140; Davis v. Wechsler, 1923, 263 U.S. 22, 24, 44 S.Ct. 13, 14, 68 L.Ed. 143. Untainted by fraud or overreaching, full and fair compromises of FELA claims do not clash with the policy of the Act. Callen v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 1948, 332 U.S. 625, 68 S.Ct. 296, 92 L.Ed. 242. The validity of such an agreement, however, raises a federal question to be resolved by federal law. Dice v. Akron, C. & Y.R. Co., 1952, 342 U.S. 359, 72 S.Ct. 312; cf. Garrett v. Moore-McCormack Co., 1942, 317 U.S. 239, 63 S.Ct. 246, 87 L.Ed. 239. And, mindful of the benevolent aims of the Act, we have jealously scrutinized private arrangements for the bartering away of federal rights. Ibid.; Boyd v. Grand Trunk Western R. Co., 1949, 338 U.S. 263, 70 S.Ct. 26, 94 L.Ed. 55; Duncan v. Thompson, 1942, 315 U.S. 1, 62 S.Ct. 422, 86 L.Ed. 575. Here, however, whether motivated by charity, dislike of litigation, or trial strategy, appellant made payments until the statute of limitations barred the employee's federal claim. Fully advised of its legal rights it submitted the controversy to the Board. The New York Court of Appeals viewed these circumstances as estopping appellant from the assertion of so long delayed a change of heart. No tenet of federal law compels otherwise.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.