Appellant sued appellee in two causes of action for serious personal injuries. The first cause of action was based on the Federal Employers’ Liability Act ( 45 U.S.C. §§ 5 and 51 et seq.), herein sometimes referred to as “F.E.L.A.” The second cause of action was a common law action for negligence. Both were submitted to a jury, which found, in answers to special interrogatories: That Great Northern Railway was negligent; that such negligence was a proximate cause of appellant’s fall and injuries; that Spokane International Railroad was not negligent; that appellant himself was not negligent; that the appellant was not an employee of either defendant; that appellant sustained damages in the sum of $20,000.

The F.E.L.A. thus being out of the case, the trial judge (as he had strongly indicated he would do when he submitted the issue of employment to the jury) granted a judgment notwithstanding the verdict to the defendant Great Northern Railway Company.

The sole question on appeal is whether the jury verdict was properly set aside and whether the judgment notwithstanding the verdict was properly entered. This was a diversity case ( 28 U.S.C. § 1332 ), if not an F.E.L.A. case ( 28 U.S.C. § 1331 ). Jurisdiction exists here under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 .

The circumstances leading up to the accident itself were generally undisputed. They were these:

On March 19, 1959, Kaiser Aluminum had a shipment of aluminum sheets to be moved from its Trentwood plant near Spokane to Seattle and Honolulu. Spokane International Railroad, as the only railway company serving Kaiser’s Trent-wood plant, was the originating carrier. The shipment was to move piggyback via Spokane International Railroad from Trentwood to Spokane, thence Great Northern Railway Company to Seattle.

The Spokane International Railroad had a contract with Ross Transfer Company for the handling of such trailer on flatcar movements. Under this arrangement, Ross Transfer would deliver a trailer to the shipper for loading of the aluminum, after which Ross Transfer Company would deliver the trailer to rail site and would load the trailer aboard the rail flatcar, secure it to the flatcar, and cover the load with a tarpaulin if required by the shipper.

Pursuant to this arrangement, plaintiff, Dale Ross, on March 19, 1959, delivered a trailer to Kaiser for loading of aluminum. After supervising the loading of the aluminum, he returned with the loaded trailer to the Great Northern Railway Company tracks near its freight house at Spokane and proceeded to load the trailer upon a flatcar provided by the Great Northern. In the loading of the trailer onto the flatcar, he was assisted by employees of Ross Transfer. He was also assisted by them in securing the trailer to the flatcar and covering the load with a tarpaulin which he had procured from the Great Northern freight house. In the process of turning or unfolding the tarpaulin on top of the load of aluminum on the trailer, which was then on the flatcar, he fell and was injured.

Plaintiff had been one of the partners and owners of Ross Transfer Company until January 1959, when the partnership, which had been incorporated, was sold to Riverside Warehouse. Before he picked up the load of aluminum from Kaiser, plaintiff picked up a tarp to cover the load at the Great Northern warehouse in Spokane. Plaintiff was told by a Great Northern employee where the tarps were located and plaintiff selected his own tarp from the warehouse. We have assumed for the purpose of this opinion that it was a tarp owned by the Great Northern Railway Company, although the tarps in the warehouse from which plaintiff selected the one involved here were owned by various trucking companies, as well as Great Northern Railway Company. When these tarps were returned to Spokane by railroad, they were consigned to Great Northern Agent McFarland and placed at door 11 of the Great Northern freight house, regardless of ownership. According to plaintiff, the tarpaulin which he selected was no different than the others at the freight house. It weighed close to 200 pounds and folded was about 4 feet across, about 1% feet high, dark green in color, massive, heavy, halfway dirty, and in a used condition. The tarp was bulky, made of canvas and had eyelets on it, much the same as Exhibits Nos. 31 and 32. They (the tarps) were also expensive, costing between $180.00 and $200.-00 apiece and, of course, were waterproof, inasmuch as their purpose was to protect the shipment from damage by rain and the elements.

When plaintiff Ross arrived at the Great Northern piggyback loading ramp with the load of aluminum, he then backed the trailer load of aluminum onto the railroad flatcar and put the original tarp he had selected earlier in the day up on top of the load of aluminum. Plaintiff’s brother, Gerald Ross, was helping him with the tarpaulin on top of the load of aluminum. Plaintiff Ross was an expert in the piggyback business and did not need anyone to tell him how to do the details of his job. After plaintiff Ross and his brother Gerald had started to unroll the tarp on top of the load of aluminum, plaintiff had to get down for a moment to get the bill of lading out of the cab of the truck. While plaintiff was away from the tarp for a moment, his brother found that the tarp was placed on the load the wrong way and would have to be turned. When plaintiff got back on the load, his brother told him of the problem and they started to turn the tarp. According to Gerald Ross, his brother grabbed hold of the tarp to help turn it and pulled on the tarp and fell backwards.

Getting to the details of appellant’s fall, it was appellant’s theory of negligence that there were wires passing through the “eyelets” of the tarp, left on when wires had been used previously to secure the tarp to flat cars, later to be cut (as were the ropes sometimes alternately used) when the tarp was removed as a cover for the aluminum shipped. These wires, with their sharp points, could easily, say appellant’s counsel, have caught in the tarp and when force was used by appellant to unfold the tarp, could have “unexpectedly” given way, “plunging” or “catapulting” the appellant to the concrete floorway of the loading dock.

There exists a considerable difference of opinion between counsel, both as shown by their briefs and expressed at the time of oral argument, as to just how the accident occurred; what force appellant exercised and against what object; where he was standing; whether the tarp was folded “wrong”, or was placed “wrong” on the load, etc.

For that reason we have carefully searched the record, and rely only on what was testified to by the various witnesses :

(2) On cross-examination, Dale Ross, who was an expert on the piggyback business of putting truck trailers on railway cars (Tr. 178-9; 196), testified he could have put the tarp on at the Kaiser plant when he picked up the load of aluminum or at the loading dock of the Great Northern spur before the trailer went on the flatcar, but “my time was behind” (p. 162), and this was not done, in order “to speed up the operation.”

Ross had a six o’clock deadline to meet. (Tr. 200.) His watch, broken in the accident, stopped at thirteen minutes to six. (Tr. 199.)

(3) Mr. Gerkensmeyer, warehouse foreman for the Great Northern Railway Company, testified he had visited Mr. Ross at his house a week or more after the accident.

(4) On the evening of the accident,. Emery Wellman, Manager of Ross-Transfer Company and plaintiff’s supervisor, went to the hospital and talked to> Mr. Ross. Testimony regarding this, conversation between Mr. Wellman and plaintiff Ross at the hospital was as follows (Tr. 320-1):

(5) Mr. Thomas Griffin, an employee of Ross Transfer Company, assisting plaintiff Ross and Gerald Ross in the loading at the time of the accident, testified as follows (Tr. 385-6):

The same Mr. Griffin testified as follows at Tr. 386-7:

(6) Plaintiff’s brother, Gerald Ross, who was within a few feet of plaintiff when the accident happened, describes the accident as follows (Tr. 399-400):

In further testimony about the actual accident, plaintiff’s brother Gerald testified as follows (Tr. 405):

The jury found the plaintiff Ross was not an employee of either railroad. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act is therefore not in the case. The trial judge, out of an abundance of caution, permitted the jury to determine if there was any inference of employment by either railroad, so as to bring the Federal Employers’ Liability Act into play. (Tr. 423.) When that aspect of the case was eliminated by the special findings of the jury, the ease became one purely of common law negligence. The federal statutes, and cases decided in interpreting them, have no place, then or now, in our consideration of the issues now remaining in the case.

Counsel for appellant urges that the railroad failed to present any evidence to explain the fall — that the railroad “failed to bring forward any theory to explain the hanging up and instantaneous release of the tarpaulin,” (Brief, p. 38); that “the presence of the only items that could cause the tarp to hang up and then suddenly release, were found by the jury to be the wires through the eyelets of the tarp.” (Brief, p. 45.) The jury’s interrogatories did not explicitly cover or refer to the wires, nor what caused the fall, nor were any such interrogatories requested or proposed.

The difficulty with appellant’s factual position on appeal is' that he interprets the language: “a slip — my hand slipped, —something gave way” into a “sudden release of the wires — the only items that could cause the tarp to suddenly release.” The story told by appellant best suited to his counsel’s theory of the case does not support the language used on his behalf in his briefs. It assumes the slip of appellant’s hand, the bracing pull appellant made; his moving from the center of the load to the south side, facing north, and his uneven footing all could not have caused or proximately contributed to the occurrence of the accident. This without reference to appellant’s deadline, his admitted haste, his alleged admitted loss of balance.

As the trial court carefully pointed out:

Counsel for appellant urgently suggest that the second sentence quoted above constitutes the taking by the trial judge of judicial knowledge of a fact that is not true, and obviously not in evidence; that all heavy canvas may be stiff and subject to catching in unfolding. Without passing on this issue, we do not find it interferes with the validity of the court’s conclusion in his third sentence, that appellant’s testimony, considered fairly, and honestly, does not reasonably exclude several equally probable causes of his fall, other than the one he urges; the two or three four or six inch wires through the eyelets.

Substantial evidence of appellee’s negligence and the proximate causal relationship between it and appellant’s injuries are required under Washington law. Substantial evidence is required, and a “scintilla” of evidence is insufficient under that law. Wilson v. North. Pac. Ry. Co., 1954, 44 Wash.2d 122 , 265 P.2d 815 ; Evans v. Yakima Valley Transp. Co., 1952, 39 Wash.2d 841 , 239 P.2d 336 ; Carley v. Allen, 1948, 31 Wash.2d 730 , 198 P.2d 827 .

In Wilson v. North Pac. Ry. Co., supra, involving a crossing accident and common law negligence, the Washington Supreme Court said:

The trial court’s refusal to grant a motion notwithstanding the jury’s verdict was reversed.

In Carley v. Allen, supra, the Washington Supreme Court said:

And further, that:

De Young v. Campbell, 1957, 51 Wash.2d 1111 , 315 P.2d 629 , upon which appellant heavily relies, merely emphasizes the previously well recognized rule that inferences based upon circumstantial evidence may be sufficient to establish proximate cause. There “[t]he evidence favorable to plaintiff, if believed by the jury, reasonably excluded the possibility that the accident was the result of any cause other than [her tires] contact with the street car rail.” (Emphasis added.) It was, as the court emphasized, “the only conclusion that could fairly and reasonably be drawn.”

No such factual situation exists in this case. Many conclusions could fairly and reasonably be drawn from the evidence, including the conclusion that the wires attached to the tarp’s eyelets had no proximate relationship whatsoever to the accident and appellant’s injuries. As the trial court stated herein below:

And see Gardner v. Seymour, 1947, 27 Wash.2d 802 , 150 P.2d 564 , particularly pp. 569 and 570.

Any award, by jury or court, would herein on the evidence before us, rest on speculation or conjecture. As the Washington Supreme Court said in Nelson v. West Coast Dairy Co., 1940, 5 Wash.2d 284 , 105 P.2d 76 , 130 A.L.R. 606 : “[There must.be] more than a mere possibility that an accident or injury may have occurred in a particular way.” There must exist a reasonable probability the plaintiff’s injuries were the proximate result of the defendant’s negligence.

Here the appellant, an admitted expert on the proper way to place tarpaulins on loaded trailers placed piggyback on freight cars (flats or gondolas), working without instructions as to how or in what manner he was to place the tarp; facing a deadline and in a hurry to finish his work; moving as he was over an uneven surface to such place and position on top of the load as he desired; without proof of any defective condition in the freight car, trailer, binding chains, tarpaulin, wires, ropes or any other equipment; with no proof anything gave way, or caught, or was suddenly released, has only proved that “something” gave way, including the appellant’s grip on the tarpaulin.

This, of course, is not to say that appellants cannot win cases based on inferences arising from circumstantial evidence alone. They may, but as we have pointed out, the evidence must then “reasonably exclude” any other proximate cause. This the evidence here presented to the jury failed to da

The order of the district court, dismissing the action notwithstanding the general verdict of the jury for the appellant, is affirmed.

. “If this was unquestionably a common law negligence case, I would not have the slightest hesitancy in dismissing the case for want of proof of either negligence or proximate cause.” (Tr. 423) . Appellant noticed two wires, in two eyelets, four to six inches in length. . The word used in the plaintiff’s contentions in the pretrial order. . The word used in oral argument, and by appellant (Tr. 113).