By John Cooper, Railroad Injury and FELA Attorney

A 24-year-old CSX conductor and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans lies in critical condition in a Roanoke, Virginia (VA) hospital nearly a week after he plunged about 50 feet from a railroad trestle into the near-freezing Jackson River in the town of Covington. The man was working in a paper mill switching yard hooking up rail cars when he fell from the bridge. He had just returned from an involuntary layoff and relied on his job with the railroad to support his two young children.

The injured conductor’s life was saved by a switchman who waded into the river to rescue him. The co-worker suffered hypothermia.

The cause of the almost fatal accident has not been announced, but both the Federal Railroad Administration and CSX have opened investigations. Whatever the specific findings, one inescapable conclusion will be that working in rail yards puts rail employees’ lives at risk. Conductors, who frequently mount and dismount cars and locomotives, are particularly prone to being struck by those trains or suffering falls that result in severe injuries and deaths. As attorneys who have represented railroad workers in FELA lawsuits against rail operators such as Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern, my colleagues and I have seen this often.

I wish the injured conductor a full and speedy recovery. I also hope that if the accident investigations uncover any equipment failures or procedural lapses that led to the conductor’s fall, that CSX and regulators act quickly to correct the problems and to prevent them for recurring.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at (800) 752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.