542
Opinion of the Court
of recovery asserted by respondents. See, e. g., Monessen Southwestern R. Co. v. Morgan, 486 U. S. 330, 336-339 (1988) (disallowing prejudgment interest under FELA in large part because such interest was unavailable at common law when FELA was enacted); Buell, supra, at 568-570. Cf. Urie v. Thompson, 337 U. S. 163, 174 (1949); Kernan v. American Dredging Co., 355 U. S. 426, 432 (1958).
A
We turn first to the statute. Section 1 of FELA provides that "[e]very common carrier by railroad . . . shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier . . . for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier." 45 U. S. C. § 51. Our task today is determining under what circumstances emotional distress may constitute "injury" resulting from "negligence" for purposes of the statute. As we previously have recognized when considering § 51, when Congress enacted FELA in 1908, its "attention was focused primarily upon injuries and death resulting from accidents on interstate railroads." Urie, supra, at 181. Cognizant of the physical dangers of railroading that resulted in the death or maiming of thousands of workers every year, Congress crafted a federal remedy that shifted part of the " 'human overhead' " of doing business from employees to their employers. Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U. S. 54, 58 (1943). See also Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 336 U. S. 53, 68 (1949) (Douglas, J., concurring) (FELA "was designed to put on the railroad industry some of the cost for the legs, eyes, arms, and lives which it consumed in its operations"). In order to further FELA's humanitarian purposes, Congress did away with several common-law tort defenses that had effectively barred recovery by injured workers. Specifically, the statute abolished the fellow servant rule, rejected the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of that of comparative negli-
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