Carson

This case involves the application of a provision of the Safety Appliance Acts, 45 U.S.C.A. §§ 11 and 12, 1 and the regulations thereunder.

. Appellee, a yardman in appellant’s employ, was injured in the latter’s Tucson yard while engaged in switching a cut of cars consisting of a box car and two tank cars. It was his duty to ride this cut and tie it down in the clear of the switch points. He was on the brake platform of one of the tank cars, which was equipped with a hand appliance of the type known as a staff brake, and it was his business to wind up the brake so that the cars would be stopped and held on the track. The Tucson yard is a hill yard and the track on which the cut had to be tied down was on a grade. The cars could not be held by setting the brake by hand, that is, merely by manually turning the brake wheel. It was necessary to use a brake club as a lever. The club is inserted in the spokes of the brake wheel; and in appellee’s winding up operation, while he was using the normal force, the club broke and he was thrown against the end of the car.

The brake club, supplied by appellant in large quantities for the use of its employees, is a piece of hickory wood. From…

(concurring).

The question is, did the railway equip its frieght cars with a brake complying with the Interstate Commerce Commission’s designated standards of Section 12 of the Safety Appliance Act, which brake, as permanently installed, complied with these standards but to which standards the railway added a defective lever bar to be applied to. the brake wheel to make the brake efficient in the grades of its freight yard?

It is apparent that these standards as much may be violated by adding dangerous factors to the Commission’s requirements as in omitting one or more of them.

Here, at the moment of leverage the lever bar became a part of the brake equipment. Because of the bar’s weakness as the brake’s lever, it broke and caused or contributed to cause the injury to the brakeman. Hence the railway’s liability comes within the provision of 45 U.S.C. 53, 45 U.S.C.A. § 53 , reading

“Sec. 53. Contributory negligence; diminution of damages. In all actions hereafter brought against any such common carrier by railroad under or by virtue of any of the provisions of this chapter to recover damages for personal injuries to an employee, or where such injuries have resulted in his…