FELA in Georgia: What Exists and What Does Not
Clarity comes first: the American FELA — the special federal claim scheme created for railway workers — does not exist in Georgian law, and we have no direct analogue of it. The route applied in Georgia by a worker injured on the railway is the ordinary tort claim: a person who causes damage to another by an unlawful intentional or negligent act is obliged to compensate that damage. The special rules of occupational safety and labor law are defined by separate legislation and do not replace the civil claim. The ordinary tort framework is nonetheless fully adequate: it covers both compensation of damage in pecuniary and non-pecuniary form, and the employer's liability for the acts of its worker. The architecture of the claim is simply different: not the conditions of a special scheme, but the establishment of fault, causation and damage.
Employer Liability in the Performance of Employment Duties
For a railway worker the central norm is the employer's liability: a person is obliged to compensate damage caused to a third person by the unlawful act of its worker in the performance of that worker's labor duties. Where the dispute concerns damage caused by a concrete manager, engineer or colleague within the framework of employment duties, liability shifts to the employer. An exception exists as well: no liability arises if the worker acted without fault — and in that case the matter remains on the general rule of fault.
Damage Connected with the Operation of a Means of Transport
The peculiarity of the railway is that rolling stock counts as a means of transport, and here the rule on damage arising from the operation applies equally: the owner of a means of transport intended for the carriage of passengers and goods, where the operation of its means of transport is followed by the death, mutilation of a person or impairment of health, or the damage of a thing, is obliged to compensate the injured party for the damage arising therefrom. This is particularly significant where the injured person is not a railway employee directly but a person located in the adjacent territory. The norm has its own exceptions: the obligation to compensate is not applied where the cargo carried is damaged — except where the passenger carries that cargo — or where a thing accepted for storage by the owner is damaged, and likewise where the damage is caused by force majeure. And where a person uses a means of transport without the owner's permission, it is obliged to compensate the damage in the owner's stead — though the owner answers where the use became possible through its fault.