By John Cooper, Virginia FELA Plaintiff’s Attorney

Injuries may have been avoided when the crew of a Norfolk Southern freight train hauling agricultural products intentionally derailed near Ridgeway, Virginia (VA), on the night of August 13, 2011. The engineer and other rail employees felt they had no choice but to jump the tracks when they spotted a large object that had been placed on the rails. Knowing a derailment might cause them injuries, they took that smaller risk over the greater danger from hitting the obstruction.

According to a report on the intentional derailing in the Martinsville Bulletin, the crew did well to keep most of the rail cars on the track when they steered the locomotive off its course. This prevented a spill and limited property damage. Most importantly, none of the crew members got killed. Railroads always claim that no injuries occurred before really knowing if or how badly their workers may be hurt.

If you suddenly got thrown around in a metal box connected to hundreds of tons of shifting weight, don’t you think you might be injured at least a little? But before you even got to go home, supervisors would circle and encourage you not to go to the doctor unless you were bleeding out of your eyes. A doctor or emergency room visit would create paperwork and threaten everyone’s no-injury bonuses, the higher-ups would argue.

Police determined that the object, which they did not identify, had been set on the tracks on purpose. By the Thursday following the accident, three boys between the ages of 12 and 14 had been arrested and charged with the class 6 felony of obstructing a railroad. Even though the children apparently did not want to injure or kill anyone, they could still face penalties of up 5 years in jail and fines of $2,500.

Those potential punishments may strike some as harsh, but if the boys did try to sabotage the NS train and its crew, what the youngsters did was no less than put the engineer’s, conductor’s and trackman’s lives at risk. Train derailments, whether intentional or accidental, often injure and kill people on the train and others living, working or just nearby when a train leaves its tracks.

As a Virginia personal injury attorney who has represented railroad employees injured on the job, I’m glad that no one died in the accident near Ridgeway, VA. I hope that anyone learning about the threat to life and limb created by the incident will refrain from doing anything similar in the future.

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.