Cite as: 538 U. S. 135 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
45 U. S. C. § 51. Enacted in 1908, Congress designed the FELA to "shif[t] part of the 'human overhead' of doing business from employees to their employers." Gottshall, 512 U. S., at 542 (quoting Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U. S. 54, 58 (1943)). "[T]o further [the Act's] humanitarian purposes, Congress did away with several common-law tort defenses that had effectively barred recovery by injured workers." Gottshall, 512 U. S., at 542. As cataloged in Gottshall, the FELA "abolished the fellow servant rule"; "rejected the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of . . . comparative negligence"; "prohibited employers from exempting themselves from [the] FELA through contract"; and, in a 1939 amendment, "abolished the assumption of risk defense." Id., at 542-543; see 45 U. S. C. §§ 51-55. "Only to the extent of these explicit statutory alterations," however, "is [the] FELA 'an avowed departure from the rules of the common law.' " Gottshall, 512 U. S., at 544 (quoting Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 356 U. S. 326, 329 (1958)). When the Court confronts a dispute regarding what injuries are compensable under the statute, Gottshall instructs, common-law principles "are entitled to great weight in our analysis." 512 U. S., at 544; see id., at 558 (Souter, J., concurring) (The Court's duty "is to develop a federal common law of negligence under FELA, informed by reference to the evolving common law.").
III
A
We turn first to the question whether the trial judge correctly stated the law when he charged the jury that an asbestosis claimant, upon demonstrating a reasonable fear of cancer stemming from his present disease, could recover for that fear as part of asbestosis-related pain and suffering damages. See supra, at 143. In answering this question, we follow the path marked by the Court's decisions in Consolidated
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