By Randy Appleton, Railroad Injury Lawyer in Virginia 

In his latest post to our law firm’s Norfolk Injuryboard blog site, my colleague Rick Shapiro decries a rollback of federal rules requiring rail corporations to install essential train-slowing and -stopping technology. The railroads, despite booking record profits, convinced regulators that protecting rail employees would be too expensive. To read more, click over to “Easing of Positive Train Control Requirement Endangers Railroad Workers.”

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Mesothelioma Attorney for Railroad Workers

In his latest blog post to our Virginia (VA) personal injury and wrongful death lawyers website, my colleague Rick Shapiro reports an important decision from the Illinois Supreme Court that has the potential to bolster cases for all people harmed by asbestos exposure. The case involves a woman who died from mesothelioma after breathing in asbestos fibers her husband brought home on his clothes and skin during the years he worked for a railroad corporation. To read more, click over to “CSX Facing ‘Secondhand Asbestos’ Wrongful Death Lawsuit.”

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, FELA Lawyer

Firm FELA lawyers Richard Shapiro and Emily Mapp Brannon secured a $309,000.00 settlement for an injured track worker who suffered a serious back injury that required two surgeries. Our client was only 25 years old but after his injury, he was relegated to a lifting restraint of 20 pounds or less. We knew that his career with the railroad was pretty much over and he needed a sizable settlement to take care of himself. Richard and Emily agreed to mediate the case with the railroad and reached a settlement for $309,000.00 which  pleased our injured track worker client.

To learn more about this case result, take a look at this page discussing the firm’s recent injured railroad worker settlement.  

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Employee Wrongful Death Attorney

A yearlong investigation into a fatal rear-end collision on tracks near Red Oak, Iowa (IA), that left two Burlington Northern Santa Fe train crew members dead led the National Transportation Safety Board to conclude that proper scheduling and technology could have prevented the crash or significantly lessened its severity.

View a larger map of where a fatal BNSF train collision occurred near Red Oak,IA.

NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman announced the findings on April 24, 2012. Her agency’s main conclusion was that the collision between the BNSF train and a stopped track maintenance vehicle occurred because the engineer and conductor crewing the moving train had fallen asleep. The two men began their shift at 2:13 am, and the accident happened around 6:00 am. Both had been working on-call schedules and had gone several days without getting adequate sleep.

Hersman went on to note that the rail employees’ fatigue would most likely have not led directly to a fatal crash if their locomotive and rail cars were equipped with positive train control systems. PTC could have automatically slowed the train, reducing the force of the impact, or stopped it altogether.

The NTSB chair also said that that the BNSF accident highlighted the need for rail equipment manufacturers to improve the crashworthiness of modular crew cabs. She promised her agency would be working on those.

In a press release, Hersman said, “Human nature – and our need for sleep – must be respected; it must be addressed. …  Humans are fallible and make mistakes and operational accidents can be prevented with positive train control.”

As a railroad worker injury and wrongful death attorney based in Virginia (VA), I know that PTC has supposed to be coming for all major railroads for some time. I also know that rail corporations — including Amtrak, BNSF, CSX and Norfolk Southern — have been pushing regulators to move back deadlines for PTC implementation. The billion-dollar corporations say installing the safety systems will cost too much. To me, this means the railroads place less value on the health and lives of their employees than required, or even approaching fair in light of the record profits companies like BNSf, CSX and NS have been making for years.

Failing the quick adoption of PTC, I hope BNSF and all other rail operators will at least look at staffing levels and scheduling practices, then make the appropriate adjustments to limit worker fatigue.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Worker Injury Attorney

An injured railroad worker or retired rail worker struggling with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis who wants to file a FELA claim against their employer has a myriad of options for legal counsel. Some lawyers even head to the airwaves and proclaim their expertise in handling railroad mesothelioma claims due to exposure to asbestos. However, you should not base your decision for counsel on slick advertisements. Here are three tips for finding the best FELA lawyer to handle your case:

1. Look at the FELA attorney’s case results page on their web site.

A lawyer can talk all they want about being the best railroad injury lawyer, but they cannot hide the truth on the case results page of their web site. Why? Because this is the most heavily regulated page on any lawyer or law firm’s site. If a lawyer posts a misleading or inaccurate case result, they could potentially be disbarred or sanctioned by their state bar association. When you’re on this page, check to see what types of case results they’ve achieved in representing injured railroad workers. Have they represented injured conductors or engineers in the on-the-job injury case? Have they handled a diesel exhaust cancer case? For an example of  relevant case results, take  a look at our FELA firm’s railroad client case results. For example, in one of our cases, our firm represented a conductor who suffered paralyzing injuries when an engine hit him while he was inspecting his own train in a rail yard. We secured a multimillion dollar settlement to ensure he was properly compensated for this traumatic, life-changing event.

2. Review the FELA attorney’s accolades and accomplishments. 

If you’re looking for the best railroad worker injury lawyer, you should look for a lawyer who is recognized as a “Best Lawyer” by U.S. News & World Report and has an “AV” rating by Martindale-Hubbell. These are non-biased organizations that objectively rank the quality and caliber of attorneys across the country. Furthermore, I was an officer and Chair of the Railroad section of the American Association of Justice.

In addition to the non-biased organizational accolades, you should review the attorney’s client testimonials. If a lawyer doesn’t have many, or any, testimonials then it could be an indicator of inexperience or a lack of quality representation. To give you an idea of the type of testimonials you should be looking for, take a look at this testimonial from a mesothelioma client.

3. Check if the FELA lawyer has written any substantive publications in railroad injury law.  

In addition to actually handling these types of complex cases and being accomplished, your FELA lawyer should have some level of expertise in this field of law. This is why you should check to see if the lawyer has written any legal articles of substance in railroad law. For example, I was a co-author of the “Railroad Health & Safety- A Litigator’s Guide,” one of leading treatises on railroad injury law, found in the nation’s law libraries (72 Am. Jur. Trials 1).

For any injured railroad worker – whether you were hurt on the job working for Amtrak, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Conrail, etc. – if you follow these three tips, you’ll improve your chances of hiring a top-notch, qualified railroad injury attorney to handle your case.

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Injury Attorney

Federal laws ranging from the Americans With Disabilities Act to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act make it illegal for any business in any industry to use may kinds of information in workers’ private medical files to make hiring, promotion and firing decisions. As corollaries to those rules, employers cannot compel employees to disclose any information about illnesses, injuries, health conditions, doctor visits or ongoing therapies when those situations are not related to workers’ job performance.

Freight railroad giant BNSF Railway intentionally violated all its employees’ federal medical privacy protections when, starting January 1, 2012, the railroad required engineers, conductors, trackmen, rail yard workers and office personnel to share every piece of health information with immediate supervisors. In a discrimination complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen noted that BNSF’s policy on medical disclosure extended to ”medical conditions and/or events that occur or are diagnosed while they are away from work … even if there is no reasonable basis for believing the condition or event has any impact on the employee’s ability to perform his/her job, and even when the employee’s own doctor has placed no limitations on the employee’s job activities.”

The United Transportation Union, along with eight other groups representing rail workers across the United States, also petitioned the EEOC to compel BNSF to rescind the medical reporting policy. The organizations argued that requiring employees to “share doctor’s notes, diagnostic test results and hospital discharge summaries” could serve no other purpose than providing the rail corporation non-job-related health information it could use to make employment decisions.

BNSF announced that it was rescinding the policy — officially listed a Rule 26.3.1 in its employee handbook – in early April. A company spokeswoman told the Lincoln (NE) Journal Star that BNSF wanted only to protect other workers and the public from employees whose health problems might make them unsafe. In that same article, though, a different railroad representative was quoted as confirming to Progressive Railroading that BNSF wanted the private medical records for “expeditious, confidential handling of fitness-for-duty reviews.”

Again: Numerous federal laws explicitly prohibit the use of large categories of medical information for making employment decisions. BNSF was definitely violating workers’ privacy when issuing and enforcing Rule 26.3.1. It attempted to justify the illegal and discriminatory policy by claiming employees had in the past put other people at risk for injury or death because they had health problems they had not disclosed to the company. Such a claim asserted without specific evidence cannot be taken on faith; at the same time, the company’s defense for flouting health privacy laws absolutely convinces everyone that the company’s executives do not trust employees to be honest or value others’ safety.

As a personal injury attorney who regularly helps railroad workers who develop occupational illnesses and get injured on the job. I also strongly suspect that BNSF wanted access to employees’ complete medical records so it could use the information to claim that any work-related injury or disease was caused by a “preexisting condition.” I already know railroads will use just about any defense to avoid liability, so having all of a hurt or sick worker’s medical records would almost certainly be a temptation BNSF could not resist.

I am equally convinced that if BNSF’s Rule 26.3.1 had withstood union objections and EEOC review, Amtrak, CSX, Norfolk Southern and every other rail corporation would soon require their workers to share every piece of health information. That won’t happen for now, but the railroads must be watched closely for their next effort to violate employees’ health privacy rights.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Injured Rail Workers’ Attorney

Easter Sunday 2012 dawned badly for two CSX Transportation employees who were hospitalized with nonlife-threatening injuries after their train collided with a derailed car from a Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad coal train in Gary, Indiana. The cause of the initial derailment remains under investigation, but reports indicate that the CSX train hauling shipping containers from Chicago to Bergen, New Jersey (NJ), was unable to stop in time to avoid hitting the hopper that had fallen into its path from a parallel track near a switching yard.

View a larger map of where a CSX train collided with a derailed car from a regional coal train, sending two crew members to the hospital.

Rescue personnel had to cut CSX crew member from the wreckage, and one of the injured workers suffered a broken leg. Both of the hurt workers were released from the hospital the same day, according to the Northwest Indiana Times.

The accident is at least the second major crash involving CSX freight trains in Indiana this year. On January 7, three of the railroad corporation’s trains collided just north of Valparaiso. Officials cited a breakdown in communications among dispatchers and train crews as the main cause of that accident. Track conditions are being eyed in connection with the most-recent wreck.

Whatever investigators determine to be the root causes of the crashes, I know, as a personal injury attorney based in Virginia (VA) who has helped many CSX employees, that those factors will almost definitely be problems that could have been prevented. Rail companies have high duties to maintain safe working conditions for all employees. That means railroad tracks must be kept in proper repair, traffic and weather hazards must be fully and clearly communicated, and appropriate safety equipment and procedures must be in place for workers to use and follow.

If any of those safeguards were not present in either of the Indiana accidents, CSX should be held accountable for both compensating the people hurt and making safety improvements so similar crashes do not recur.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Railroad Injury Lawyer in Virginia

Charles Goetsch, the railroad employment and injury lawyer who helped a wrongfully terminated Metro-North trackman win $1 million in punitive damages against his employer after being fired for reporting an on-the-job injury recently answered questions about the landmark FRSA case. The most important outcome from the March 2012 jury verdict in Connecticut, according to Goetsch, is that allowing railroads to sweep safety issues under the rug by getting rid of workers hurt on the job “needlessly exposes everyone in the community to an increased risk of injury.” To read more of what Goetsch told my Virginia personal injury attorney colleague Rick Shapiro, click over to “$1M Award to Wrongfully Fired Rail Employee a Message to Railroads to Take Safety Seriously.”

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Railroad Repetitive Stress Injury Attorney

A civil jury award of just less than $1.25 million to a retired CSX Transportation brakeman and engineer who developed debilitating osteoarthritis in both knees has been upheld by a Maryland (MD) appeals court. In ordering the railroad corporation to compensate the man for past and future medical expenses related to the degenerative disease, as well as pain and suffering, judges in Baltimore County noted that “”the Federal Employers’ Liability Act imposes on the defendant railroad a duty to [its] employees and to all of [its] employees including [this plaintiff] to exercise reasonable care to provide the employee with a reasonably safe place in which to work, reasonably safe conditions to work and reasonably safe tools and equipment.”

CSX argued during both the circuit and appeals court cases that provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act, or FRSA, spelling out requirements for placing and maintaining gravel on rail beds prohibited rail workers from filing FELA claims for compensation for injuries or health problems blamed on unsafe ballast. As a personal injury attorney in Virginia (VA) whose law firm has helped rail workers win cases involving poorly groomed and graded ballast, I know CSX’s defense was bogus. The jurors and appellate judges in Maryland saw through the railroad’s legal smoke and mirrors, too.

The plaintiff in the case ultimately decided as CSX Transportation v. Pitts began his rail career as a trackman in 1971 and spent the next 32 years as a fireman, conductor and engineer. Each job required him to walk as much as 2 miles each day on gravel beds. The uneven and shifting surface strained his knees to the point that he eventually began suffering muscle and cartilage tears, the grinding of bone on bone and constant pain. Arthritis is one of the most common results of repetitive stress injuries for railroad employees.

There is no question that repetitive stresses and occupational illnesses — whether respiratory, such as mesothelioma, or degenerative, such as spinal disc damage — are grounds for FELA lawsuits. Despite this, rail companies will often try to avoid liability for not protecting employees’ lives and health. I am pleased to see that CSX was held accountable this time.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Injured Rail Worker’s Lawyer

In his latest blog post to our Virginia (VA) personal injury attorneys’ website, my colleague Rick Shapiro reports on a major whistleblower lawsuit victory for a Metro-North commuter railroad worker who was fired after he reported an on-the-job injury. A jury in Connecticut (CT) awarded the trackman $1 million in damages, determining that the rail corporation had violated the man’s employment rights under the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 2007, or FRSA. To read more, click over to “Jury Awards $1M to Wrongfully Terminated Rail Employee.”

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.