McCluskey v. Marysville & Northern Railway Co.

Background

A brakeman named Nordgard was hired by a logging company and worked on the company’s own logging railroad. The company, Stimson Mill Company, moved logs from its timber land to a point near Marysville and dumped them into Puget Sound. Some logs were sold to nearby mills, while others were rafted and towed to the company’s own mills, and finished timber was later sold both locally and to other states and countries. Nordgard was injured while unloading logs at the tidewater and sued under the federal employers’ liability law. The trial court directed a verdict for the company because it found no evidence the work was part of interstate or foreign commerce, and the lower court affirmed that dismissal.

Reasoning

The central question was whether the company and its railroad were engaged in interstate or foreign commerce at the exact time of the accident. The Court applied earlier decisions saying that products do not become part of interstate commerce until they are committed to a common carrier or actually started on their way to another State or country. Here there was no contract of carriage, no bill of lading, and no consignor or consignee; the company simply carried its own goods to a local market and sold them. Because the logs had not been shipped or committed to a carrier to take them out of the State, the Court concluded the activity was not interstate or foreign commerce and affirmed the judgment.

Real world impact

Workers who unload or move a company’s own goods to a local market may not be covered by federal employers’ liability protections unless the goods are committed to interstate transport. The Court also noted an administrative substitution of parties and treated the procedural irregularity as waived.