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Torts keyed to Robertson
Lancaster v. Norfolk and Western Railway Co.
Citation:
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 1985. 773 F.2d 807.Facts
The Plaintiff, Lancaster, worked as a railway mechanic for the Defendant, Norfolk and Western Railway Co. While working in Illinois, the Plaintiff worked under a foreman named Lachrone. Lachrone had a reputation for being short tempered and roughing up his workers. On one incident Lachrone grabbed a broom handle, approached the Plaintiff in a menacing fashion and screamed at him for 15 seconds and shook the broomstick in the face.
The incident abnormally upset the Plaintiff. He became paranoid and thought people were following him. He thought working for the railroad was too much pressure and moved to Georgia to find a new job. However, after a couple of months he went back and to his old job. The new foreman he worked for, Funderburk, would pull on his workers’ hair and hit them on the arms. He did this to the Plaintiff despite his protests. This culminated in an incident where Funderburk put his hand down the Plaintiff’s pants, squeezing his buttock and sticking his finger in the Plaintiff’s anus. The Plaintiff became very upset, had trouble working, and consulted a doctor who advised him to take a leave of absence, which he did. The Plaintiff was showing definite symptoms of mental illness, most notably in the form of a hallucination in which he believed he saw a bug-like creature with humanoid hands, feet, and face. The doctor diagnosed the Plaintiff with anxiety.
A couple of years later, the Plaintiff returned to work and worked without issue until an incident in 1979 involving another supervisor, Boyd. Boyd picked up a sledgehammer and slung it at a pin that was stuck. The sledgehammer flew out of Boyd’s hands when he completed his swing and and it struck the Plaintiff. Although the Plaintiff was only bruised, he was very upset and believed that Boyd threw the sledgehammer at him.
The next supervisor the Plaintiff worked for, Tynan, in a fit of rage charged the Plaintiff with pickax handle in hand and struck the door frame over the Plaintiff’s head with the handle. After this incident, the Plaintiff became even more upset than after the previous ones and his mental health deteriorated quickly. He was referred to a psychologists and soon after was diagnosed as schizophrenic. The Plaintiff quit and never returned to work.
A psychologist who testified for the Defendant stated that the Plaintiff’s latent schizophrenia would surely have been triggered by some other traumatic even if no supervisor misconduct would have occurred. The two psychiatrists who testified for the Plaintiff stated that this was unlikely among other reasons because the Plaintiff had gone through two divorces without incident. All three of the expert witnesses agreed that the incident with Tynan had caused a descent into madness from which the Plaintiff will never recover.
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