Pratt v. Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp.

16-2538-cv
Pratt v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp.
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A
SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED
BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1.
WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST
CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE
NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY
OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.
At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley
Square, in the City of New York, on the 7th day of September, two thousand
seventeen.
PRESENT:
ROBERT D. SACK,
PETER W. HALL,
CHRISTOPHER F. DRONEY,
Circuit Judges.
Michael J. Pratt, Administrator of the
Estate of Eric J. Pratt, Deceased,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 16-2538-cv
National Railroad Passenger
Corporation, DBA Amtrak, New
England Central Railroad, Inc., Michael
E. Kujala, William C. Rae,
Defendants-Appellees.
FOR APPELLANT: ROBERT C. SULLIVAN, Sullivan Law, LLC, Kansas City,
MO.
FOR APPELLEES: ROBERT B. HEMLEY (Navah C. Spero, on the brief),
Gravel & Shea PC, Burlington, VT.
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16-2538-cv
Pratt v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of
Vermont (Sessions, J.).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED,
AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Plaintiff-Appellant Michael J. Pratt, Administrator of the Estate of Eric J.
Pratt, appeals from the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the
Defendants-Appellees in this action for the wrongful death of Eric J. Pratt, who was
only fifteen years old when he was tragically struck and killed by an Amtrak train
in Vernon, Vermont on January 15, 2012. We assume the parties’ familiarity with
the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal.
“We review de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment, ‘construing
the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and drawing all
reasonable inferences in its favor.’” Minda v. United States, 851 F.3d 231, 234 (2d
Cir. 2017) (quoting SCR Joint Venture L.P. v. Warshawsky, 559 F.3d 133, 137 (2d
Cir. 2009)). “Our task is ‘to determine whether the district court properly concluded
that there was no genuine dispute as to any material fact, such that the moving
party was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’” Id. (quoting Myers v. Patterson,
819 F.3d 625, 632 (2d Cir. 2016)).
I. Objective Evidence of Train Speed and Horn Blasts
The district court correctly ruled that under Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372
(2007), the objective video and data evidence furnished by the Defendants on
summary judgment was sufficient to overcome all contrary eyewitness testimony
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and preclude any genuine dispute of material fact as to the train’s speed and horn
blasts.
Having carefully examined the record, we cannot agree with the Appellant’s
contentions that there were irregularities or inconsistencies in the video and data
evidence sufficient to give rise to a genuine issue of material fact. To the contrary,
we are satisfied that the objective evidence is consistent. As the district court noted,
the minor discrepancies in the formatting of the data reports were explained by the
testimony of Amtrak’s IT expert witness, who stated that the older report was
generated with an older version of the report generation software, while the newer
report was generated with an updated version of the software that presented the
data in a slightly different format.
The Appellant claims that the video is inconsistent with the data reports
because the data reports show the horn continuing after the collision, while the
video shows the horn stopping immediately after the collision. Our review of the
video and the data reports has revealed that the district court was correct in
determining that both show the horn continuing to sound during the collision and
stopping within the second after the collision. Furthermore, the relevant question is
whether the horn sounded before impact, a fact established consistently by both
video and data reports.
We conclude that the district court correctly applied Scott v. Harris, id., in
entering summary judgment in favor of the Defendants with respect to the
allegations of negligence arising out of the train’s speed and horn blasts.
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16-2538-cv
Pratt v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp.
II. Causation and the Train’s Emergency Brakes
In Andrews v. Metro North Commuter Railroad Co., 882 F.2d 705, 709 (2d
Cir. 1989), a case involving a train collision in Connecticut, we applied the “widely
accepted” general principle that “absent knowledge of some disability on the part of
a mature pedestrian seen on or near the tracks, a locomotive engineer who gives a
proper alarm is entitled to assume that the pedestrian will heed the warning and
move to a place of safety.” See also Raspente v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp., 111 F.3d
239, 242 (2d Cir. 1997) (applying this “open run” rule under New York law). The
district court applied that rule here under Vermont law, and Appellant raises no
error in that decision. Accordingly, viewing the video evidence through the lens of
this rule, the district court correctly concluded that there could be no genuine
dispute as to the fact that the engineer could not reasonably have been expected to
apply the emergency brakes any earlier than three seconds prior to the collision.
Absent expert testimony to the contrary, the district court did not err in
adopting the defense expert’s computation of the effect of such braking, which
indicated that three seconds of braking would have slowed the train by two miles
per hour and would have resulted in the train reaching the decedent’s position at
the intersection mere hundredths of a second later than it did. That sliver of time
falls far short of the one second that the decedent would have needed to escape
harm’s way, regardless of whether he was continuing at his normal walking pace or
diving out of the train’s path immediately before impact. We find no error in the
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district court’s conclusion that a reasonable juror could not find that this difference
would have been enough to avoid the collision.
Based on this, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment on
the issue of causation, ruling as a matter of law that application of the emergency
brake even at the earliest reasonable moment would not have made any difference
in the outcome of the incident, and that any breach of duty on the part of the
Defendants thus could not have been the cause of the decedent’s death.
III. Conclusion
We have fully considered all of the Appellant’s arguments in favor of reversal
and find that they do not merit a different outcome. While we appreciate the impact
of this tragedy on the deceased and his survivors, we are of course required to
resolve this appeal by applying the law to the facts as best we can, irrespective of
our sympathies.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
FOR THE COURT:
Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk
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