Gousgoulas v. National Railroad Passenger: Corporation

Filing 50

ORDER AND MEMORANDUM: granting in part and denying in part 38 Motion in Limine; granting 40 Motion in Limine. For the reasons set forth above, defendant may introduce evidence concerning plaintiff's retirement options at different ages. The Clerk of the Court is directed to close Docket Nos. 38 and 40. SO ORDERED (Signed by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald on 4/24/2017) (ama)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
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PATRICIA GOUSGOULAS,
Plaintiff,
ORDER AND MEMORANDUM
- against 15 Civ. 2582(NRB)
NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION,
d/b/a AMTRAK,
Defendant.
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NAOMI REICE BUCHWALD
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Plaintiff sued her employer, National “Railroad Passenger
Corporation d/b/a Amtrak (“Amtrak”), under the Federal Employers’
Liability Act (“FELA”), 45 U.S.C. § 51, et seq., for injuries
sustained when she fell at work.
filed motions in limine.

In advance of trial, the parties

Oral argument on the record addressing

the motions in limine was held on April 20, 2017.
One

issue

concerning

evidence

addressing

retirement age remained following argument.

plaintiff’s

Plaintiff’s counsel

has informed the Court that she will testify that she intended to
work until age 66 and 3.5 months had she not been injured.

To

challenge that testimony and plaintiff’s credibility, defendant
seeks to introduce evidence that plaintiff would have been entitled
to retire with partial benefits at age 62 and full benefits at
approximately age 67 if she had continued working for Amtrak.

1

Plaintiff argues that such evidence is barred under the collateral
source rule.1

For the reasons set forth below, we find that

defendant may introduce evidence concerning plaintiff’s retirement
options at different ages.
I.

DISCUSSION
“The collateral source rule is a substantive rule of law

that bars the reduction of an award by funds or benefits received
from collateral or independent sources.”

King v. City of N.Y.,

No. 06 CIV. 6516SAS, 2007 WL 1711769, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. June 13,
2007).

“The rule is intended to ensure that the availability of

independent sources of income providing compensation does not
reduce plaintiff's recovery.”

Id.

In Eichel v. New York Central Railroad Company, the Supreme
Court applied the collateral source rule to a FELA case to exclude
evidence of collateral benefits offered for purposes other than
mitigating damages.

The issue was whether the defendant railroad

could introduce evidence that plaintiff was receiving disability
payments in order to impeach plaintiff’s testimony as to the
permanency of his injuries and his motive for not returning to
work.

The Supreme Court held that the evidence was inadmissible:
In our view the likelihood of misuse by the jury clearly
outweighs the value of this evidence. Insofar as the
evidence bears on the issue of malingering, there will
generally be other evidence having more probative value

1 The parties agree that defendant may rebut plaintiff’s testimony by
introducing statistical evidence regarding the age at which railroad workers
with comparable work history typically retire.

2

and involving less likelihood of prejudice than the
receipt of a disability pension. . . . It has long been
recognized that evidence showing that the defendant is
insured creates a substantial likelihood of misuse.
Similarly, we must recognize that the petitioner's
receipt of collateral social insurance benefits involves
a substantial likelihood of prejudicial impact.
375 U.S. at 255–56 (citations omitted) (footnotes omitted).

Thus,

the “the general rule in FELA cases is that evidence of payments
made to plaintiff from collateral sources is not admissible, though
such evidence may be admissible if the plaintiff puts his financial
status at issue.”

Santa Maria v. Metro-N. Commuter R.R., 81 F.3d

265, 272–73 (2d Cir. 1996).
Here, the issue is whether defendant may introduce evidence
that plaintiff would have been entitled to retire at age 62 with
partial benefits in order to impeach her testimony that she would
have worked until age 66 and 3.5 months.

As noted earlier,

plaintiff argues that defendant’s proffered evidence is barred by
the Supreme Court’s decision in Eichel and subsequent case law.
Eichel does not address the issue presented here.

Eichel is

a true collateral source case, and, even assuming that we could,
we would not reach a different result.2

Rather, as some of the

cases citing Eichel recognize, future, hypothetical retirement
benefits are not paradigmatic collateral source benefits.

See,

2 We also note that, according to the Second Circuit, “Eichel does not
establish an absolute bar against the admission of [collateral source] evidence
for purposes other than mitigation of damages.” Mills v. Energy Transp. ¥Corp.,
29 F. App'x 744, 745 (2d Cir. 2002).

3

e.g., Griesser v. Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp., 2000 PA Super 1999,
¶ 23, 761 A.2d 606, 612 (2000) (noting that “evidence at issue is
not ‘classic’ collateral source evidence”); see also Evans v. Union
Pac. R.R. Co., No. 13-CV-1732-WJM-BNB, 2015 WL 1945104, at *2 (D.
Colo. Apr. 29, 2015) (finding that “Plaintiff does not explain how
evidence of the hypothetical possibility of retirement constitutes
impermissible evidence of a receipt of benefits from a collateral
source”).
Nonetheless, we recognizes that there is a split in the cases.
Compare Lee v. Consol. Rail Corp., No. CIV. A. 94-6411, 1995 WL
734108, at *5 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 5, 1995) (excluding evidence of age
at which plaintiff could retire with full retirement benefits under
Eichel), Norfolk S. Ry. Corp. v. Henry Tiller, 179 Md. App. 318,
944 A.2d 1272 (2008) (same), and Griesser, 2000 PA Super 1999, 761
A.2d at 609 (same), with Cowden v. BNSF Ry. Co., 980 F. Supp. 2d
1106, 1127 (E.D. Mo. 2013) (admitting evidence), Stevenson v. Union
Pac. R.R. Co., No. 4:07CV00522BSM, 2009 WL 652932, at *3 (E.D.
Ark. Mar. 12, 2009) (same); and Gaskins v. CSX Transp., Inc., No.
1:04-CV-2952-WBH, 2006 WL 6864633, at *9 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 5, 2006)
(same).
However,

we

find

that

the

above-cited

cases

evidence of retirement benefits are distinguishable.

excluding
Those cases

all involved efforts by defendants to introduce evidence that the
plaintiff would be entitled to receive full retirement benefits at

4

an age earlier than the plaintiff had maintained he would have
retired.

Thus, as the court in Griesser noted, the introduction

of evidence on early retirement benefits could create a significant
danger of misuse and jury confusion to plaintiff’s prejudice.
Griesser, 2000 PA Super 1999, ¶ 24, 761 A.2d at 612.
In contrast, here, the evidence provides an incentive for
plaintiff to continue working until 66 and 3.5 months, as she
proposes, since additional years of working will not only bring
her additional earnings but will also increase her retirement
benefits.

Moreover, even the cases that rejected the proffered

evidence acknowledge that defendants should be able to challenge
a plaintiff’s stated intended retirement age. Id. at 2000 PA Super
1999 ¶ 27, 761 A.2d at 613 (“We agree that Amtrak should be able
to present evidence tending to show that Appellant would not work
beyond age 60.”).
Having found that Eichel is inapplicable, we find that the
evidence is admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.

There

is no question that the evidence is highly probative to the
question of when plaintiff would have retired, which is the central
issue in calculating plaintiff’s lost future wages.

In contrast,

we do not find it likely that the evidence will confuse the jury
or

prejudice

plaintiff.

Since

the

retirement

benefits

are

hypothetical rather than actual, there is no reason for the jury
to offset plaintiff’s award by the benefits she might have received

5