## Facts

- Curtis and Karen Lee Robertson were injured in an automobile collision allegedly caused by Tony K. LeMaster, an employee of Norfolk & Western Railway Co. (N&W), who fell asleep while driving home after work.
- LeMaster, a 19-year-old section laborer, reported to work at 7:00 a.m. on October 11, 1978, at N&W’s section office about 50 miles from his home.
- After several hours, LeMaster’s crew was dispatched to an emergency derailment site and performed continuous heavy manual labor (including lifting ties and shoveling coal) until well beyond his normal quitting time.
- Around 10:00 p.m., LeMaster told his foreman he was tired and wanted to go home; he was told he could not leave and continued working.
- LeMaster was first able to eat again at about 1:00 a.m. on October 12; evidence indicated he worked more than 27 hours without rest.
- After the work ended, an N&W employee drove LeMaster back to his car at the section office; during that ride LeMaster fell asleep holding a lit cigarette.
- N&W did not provide rest facilities or alternative transportation home, and LeMaster drove himself toward home in the early morning.
- The Robertsons alleged N&W negligently required LeMaster to work through the night without rest and failed to prevent him from driving home when N&W knew or should have known he posed a danger to the public.
- The Robertsons settled claims against LeMaster and his mother before trial; the case proceeded only against N&W.

## Issues

1. Whether N&W owed a duty of reasonable care to third-party motorists when it required an employee to work an extended shift without rest and then permitted him to drive home in an obviously exhausted condition.
2. Whether LeMaster’s fatigue-related negligent driving constituted an independent intervening cause that relieved N&W of liability as a matter of law.
3. Whether the evidence, viewed favorably to the plaintiffs, required submission of negligence and proximate cause to the jury rather than disposition by directed verdict.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reversed the directed verdict for N&W and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence for a jury to determine whether N&W’s affirmative conduct created a foreseeable, unreasonable risk of harm to motorists and whether N&W breached a duty of reasonable care.
- The court held proximate cause and intervening cause were jury questions on these facts; LeMaster’s conduct was not, as a matter of law, an independent superseding cause.
- Applying the directed-verdict standard, the court concluded reasonable inferences could support liability, so the case should not have been taken from the jury.

## Legal Principles

- A person or entity is liable in negligence when it breaches a duty to conduct itself so as not to injure others.
- One who engages in affirmative conduct and realizes or should realize it has created an unreasonable risk of harm to another has a duty to use reasonable care to prevent the threatened harm.
- On a motion for directed verdict, all reasonable doubts and inferences must be resolved in favor of the party against whom the verdict is sought.
- An intervening cause relieves a negligent actor only if it is a new, independent effective cause that alone becomes the proximate cause of the injury.
- Negligence and contributory negligence are for the jury when evidence conflicts or when reasonable persons could draw different conclusions from undisputed facts.

## Conclusion

The court held that an employer’s affirmative conduct in imposing extreme work hours without rest can create a foreseeable risk to the motoring public, supporting a duty of reasonable care beyond the workplace, and that proximate cause and intervening cause should be decided by the jury rather than by directed verdict when reasonable inferences support liability.


Robertson v. LeMaster, 171 W. Va. 607 (W. Va. 1983)