163 Opinion of the Court. under conditions likely to bring about such harmful consequences, the injury to the employee is just as great when it follows, often inevitably, from a carrier's negligent course pursued over an extended period of time as when it comes with the suddenness of lightning. Silicosis is as much "injury," leading in time as certainly to permanent disability, as scalding from a boiler's explosion. We do not think the mere difference in the time required for different acts of negligence to take effect and disclose their harmful, disabling consequences would justify excluding the one type of injury from the Act's coverage or that such an exclusion would be consistent with its language, purposes, or unvarying standards of construction. Accordingly it follows, as the Missouri Supreme Court assumed on the first appeal, that petitioner's original complaint did not fail in stating a cause of action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act for want of allegation of sufficient injury. Petitioner was entitled to go to trial at that time without restriction requiring him to show violation of the Boiler Inspection Act. This conclusion, if it were all that is involved in the case, would compel reversal of the state supreme court's decision and remand for trial upon the original complaint. However, it remains to consider the effect of the Boiler Inspection Act and whether the verdict rendered for petitioner under that Act, in conjunction with the Federal Employers' Liability Act, should be allowed to stand. III. By virtue of the course taken by the case in the state courts, the Missouri Supreme Court did not squarely hold that silicosis was not an injury within the coverage of the Federal Employers' Liability Act considered apart from the Boiler Inspection Act. As the case took shape that question did not arise on the first appeal. And by Opinion of the Court. 337 U.S. virtue of the ruling on the remand for trial, that the only cause of action stated was that arising under the Boiler Inspection Act, the court on the second appeal treated the question whether silicosis was a compensable injury substantially as if the Boiler Inspection Act was a wholly independent statute, unrelated in the scope of its coverage, for purposes of employees' suits for breach of its provisions, to the Employers' Liability Act's terms, i. e., as if the question arose solely under the Boiler Inspection Act. But by its own terms the Boiler Inspection Act, like the Safety Appliance Acts," does not purport to confer any right of action upon injured employees. It merely makes violation of its prohibitions "unlawful." 29 Yet it has been held consistently that the Boiler Inspection Act supplements the Federal Employers' Liability Act by imposing on interstate railroads "an absolute and continuing duty" to provide safe equipment. Lilly v. Grand Trunk R. Co., supra at 485; Southern R. Co. v. Lunsford, 297 U. S. 398, 401; cf. Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Groeger, 266 U. S. 521, 528-529. This conclusion stems, not from any express statutory language, but by implication from §§ 3 and 4 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U. S. C. §§ 53, 54, which bar pleadings of, respectively, contributory negligence and assumption of risk "in any case where the violation by such common carrier of any statute enacted for the safety of employees contributed to the injury or death of such employee." But it is 1 of the Federal Employers' " 30 28 45 U.S. C. § 1 et seq. 29 See note 4 and text. 30 In ordinary negligence claims under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, contributory negligence while not a bar to the action is available in diminution of damages, 45 U. S. C. § 53, 35 Stat. 65, 66. Assumption of risk was a complete defense to negligence claims, Seaboard Air Line v. Horton, 233 U. S. 492, 503, until its abolition 163 Opinion of the Court. Liability Act, and not §§ 3 and 4, which expressly creates a cause of action for negligence; and by the same token it is § 1 which is the basis of an employee's suit for violation of the Boiler Inspection or Safety Appliance Acts. For where § 1 "refers to 'any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances,' etc., it clearly is the legislative intent to treat a violation of the Safety Appliance Act as 'negligence'-what is sometimes called negligence per se." San Antonio & A. P. R. Co. v. Wagner, 241 U. S. 476, 484. In this view the Safety Appliance Acts, together with the Boiler Inspection Act, are substantively if not in form amendments to the Federal Employers' Liability Act. They dispense, for the purposes of employees' suits, with the necessity of proving that violations of the safety statutes constitute negligence; and making proof of such violations is effective to show negligence as a matter of law. Thus taken, as has been the consistent practice, the Boiler Inspection and Safety Appliance Acts cannot be regarded as statutes wholly separate from and independent of the Federal Employers' Liability Act. They are rather supplemental to it, having the purpose and effect of facilitating employee recovery, not of restricting such recovery or making it impossible. in 1939. 45 U. S, C. § 54, 53 Stat. 1404, amending 35 Stat. 66. See Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U. S. 54. The quoted statutory phrase was held to acknowledge creation of a cause of action "under the Federal Employers' Liability Act" for personal injury to an employee due to violation of the Safety Appliance Acts, 45 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., since, "By the phrase 'any statute enacted for the safety of employees' the Congress evidently intended to embrace its Safety Appliance Acts." Moore v. C. & O. R. Co., 291 U. S. 205, 210. Similarly an employee injury suit alleging violation of the Boner Inspection Act is brought "under the Federal Employers' Liability Act . . . ." Lilly v. Grand Trunk R. Co., 317 U. S. 481, 485 Opinion of the Court. 337 U.S. Regarded in this light, the Boiler Inspection and Safety Appliance Acts would take on highly incongruous character if, at the very time they were expediting employee recovery under the Employers' Liability Act by substituting the comparatively light burden of proving violation of their prohibitions for the heavier one of proving negligence, they were also contracting the scope of compensable injuries and to that extent defeating recovery altogether. We do not think that Congress intended to act so inconsistently or that, by dispensing with the employee's burden of proving negligence in certain classes of Employers' Liability Act suits, it had any purpose to withdraw from that Act's coverage any injury caused by the employment which was covered by its terms. In the absence of any specific showing that Congress had in mind such a restrictive and inconsistent object, we are not free to create one by inference, more especially when it is derived from approaching the problem as if the Boiler Inspection and Safety Appliance Acts were wholly independent of and separate in design and purpose from the Employers' Liability Act. The congressional purpose underlying the Boiler Inspection Act is basically the same as that underlying the Safety Appliance Acts and the Employers' Liability Act. In requiring that the boiler, and, not long after, that the entire locomotive, be maintained "in proper condition and safe to operate," Congress by its own statement was attempting to insure that such equipment "be employed in . . . active service . . . without unnecessary peril to life or limb . . . ." 45 U. S. C. § 23. Certain requirements of the Safety Appliance Acts, as for example the use of the automatic coupler, 45 U. S. C. § 2, are made mandatory by express statutory language. Others, like those of the Boiler Inspection Act, simply outline a general standard which may be more specifically articulated in rules enunciated by the carriers subject to the approval 163 Opinion of the Court. of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 45 U. S. C. § 28, or directly promulgated by the Commission, Napier v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 272 U. S. 605, 611-613, on the basis of proper findings. United States v. B. & O. R. Co., 293 U. S. 454. Violations of the Commission's rules are violations of the statute, giving rise not only to damage suits by those injured, Lilly v. Grand Trunk R. Co., supra, but also to money penalties recoverable by the United States. 45 U. S. C. § 34. As with the Employers' Liability Act, we do not doubt that the prime purpose of the Boiler Inspection Act was the protection of railroad employees and perhaps also of passengers and the public at large, cf. Fairport, P. & E. R. Co. v. Meredith, 292 U. S. 589, from injury due to industrial accident. The safety of all those affected by railroading was uppermost in the legislative mind. But again, as with the Employers' Liability Act, we cannot accept the view that protection of employee health is not embraced by the congressional plan." Indeed, as to the Boiler Inspection Act, this Court has twice had 31 Respondent places some reliance on the proposition that congressional limitation of the Boiler Inspection Act to accidental injury must be inferred from the provision requiring the carrier to report every locomotive "accident" resulting in "serious injury." 45 U. S. C. § 32. We see no reason to think that a policy requiring the reporting of all injuries the causes of which are readily identifiable in terms of time and place compels the conclusion that other injuries, the origins of which may be remote and ill-defined at the moment of diagnosis, should not be compensable when the carrier's underlying responsibility becomes a matter of demonstrable fact. It is to be noted, furthermore, that an argument similar to respondent's was rejected with reference to congressional intent to include occupational diseases in the 1916 Federal Employees' Compensation Act, H. R. Rep. No. 280, 68th Cong., 1st Sess. 3, and, although advanced with reference to the 1908 Federal Employees' Compensation Act, Claim of A. E. Clark, Dec. 17, 1908, Opinions of Solicitor, U. S. Department of Labor (1915) 188, 190, did not bar compensation of the questionably "accidental" injuries described in the text at notes 24-27 supra. |