By John Cooper, Virginia FELA Plaintiff’s Attorney

In a July 20, 2011, conference call, top CSX officials reported record profits while glossing over the deaths of three company employees and injuries to dozens of other rail workers during the second fiscal quarter of its fiscal year.

Within two minutes, CSX Chairman, President and CEO Michael J. Ward announced, “Operating income [profit on more than $3 billion in revenue] was up 21 percent to a record $926 million.” Well after that, David A. Brown, CSX’s chief operating officer, noted, “We were deeply saddened by the loss of three employees.” A slide shown while Brown was speaking indicated that CSX had a personal injury rate of 0.89 and a train accident rate of 2.37.

Brown did not explain what those rates meant, but the Federal Railroad Administration typically records injuries and accidents as a percentage of incidents per million miles traveled. FRA data show that, in real numbers, CSX saw 80 train accidents through June 15 in 2011. The most serious of those occurred in Union City, North (NC), on May 24. A locomotive engineer and a conductor died when two freight trains collided. Two other train crew members suffered injuries.

Another CSX worker lost his life in a Waycross, Georgia (GA), rail yard on April 29. One of the company’s rail cars turned over onto the man’s pickup truck.

CSX has some justification for pointing to quarter-to-quarter decreases and a general downward trend in on-the-job injuries for it rail workers, but the corporate executives’ performance in the most recent call to investors shows that they prize profits over protection of workers. This attitude appears to be shared across the railroad injury. Safety is claimed as a core mission and value, but spending on preventing accidents and limiting exposures to toxic substances always seems to take a back seat to using money taken in to take in more money.

Working in Virginia Beach, VA, as a FELA attorney — minutes from rail terminals in Norfolk and Newport News that receive and discharge dozens of Norfolk Southern and CSX trains each week — I know rail employees will never face zero risks to life and limb. But I would welcome a presentation to railroad investors in which a rail company stated it had taken significant charges against quarterly or yearly profits specifically to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm whose attorneys have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases.  Attorneys will our firm have served as chairmen of the Railroad section of the American Association for Justice. One of our attorneys wrote a major attorney’s encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach and Hampton, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers also hold licenses to practice in South Carolina (SC), West Virginia (WV), Kentucky (KY), Florida (FL) and Washington, DC, and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. Rick Shapiro and James Lewis were included in the 2011 issue of Best Lawyers in America. They, along with fellow attorney John M. Cooper, were also named 2011 Virginia Super Lawyers for Personal Injury Law, an honor which fewer than 5 percent of outstanding lawyers receive. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, such as 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. Further, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.