Does an Employer Have a Duty to Keep a Bathroom Clean? Court Flushes Complaint

The answer is “no.” Here are the disgusting details.

Ricky Lynn Edwards arrived at work on a CSX train with an upset stomach. He went to the bathroom, which only added to his problems. The bathroom’s urine, feces, dirt and cleaning chemicals on his train's lead car caused him to run to a catwalk outside the cabin to vomit. Edwards fell over a handrail, breaking two vertebrae and a rib and ending his 31-year career with CSX.

Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman in the Eastern District of Tennessee last year granted the railroad's motion for summary judgment, saying CSX was required only to inspect employee bathrooms once daily. A federal appeals court affirmed the ruling on Friday, stating: “While (the Locomotive Inspection Act) requires CSX to have such toilets and to clean them once a day, they do not require railroad companies to ensure that the toilets are clean at any given moment between inspections.”

But interesting aside: Edwards likely has a strong worker's compensation claim under the personal comfort doctrine. The doctrine includes a genre of cases where women, in a unisex bathroom, have landed too hard on a toilet rim because the men ahead of them forgot to lower the lid. These cases typically present expensive claims for broken tailbones and lower back injuries. So, employers do have legal duties related to bathrooms.