Train Collision and Train Derailment Injury Cases (Podcast)
Paul Kelley from the Satterley and Kelley personal injury law firm talks about train-related injuries. He explains the types of injuries that can be caused by derailments and collisions. Then, he outlines who’s liable and what to do if you’ve been injured.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher. I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky Personal Injury Law Firm, Satterley and Kelly, which has over 30 years of collective experience in handling personal injury and wrongful death claims. Today we’re talking about train collision and train derailment injury cases. Welcome Paul.
Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How are you doing today?
Do You Have a Case If You’re Injured as a Result of a Train Derailment?
John: Good, thanks. Paul, you know a significant train derailment has been in the news lately in Ohio. If you’re injured as a result of a train derailment, do you have a potential case?
Paul: The answer is possibly. Facts of the derailment or the collision always have an impact on whether or not there’s a case. When we’re talking about a derailment, you’ve got two typical situations that occur.
One, you’ve got human error on the part of the engineer who’s operating the train, or you have equipment problems. Maybe there’s a problem with the track, maybe there’s a problem with the train itself. Maybe there’s a problem with some of the switch material or mechanisms that switch tracks. There’s all kinds of potential possibilities for what causes a derailment.
Typically speaking, if a train derails and it somehow causes an injury, whether in some way the train came into contact with a person or a vehicle that a person was riding in or there was a chemical exposure, which I think is what’s occurred more recently and people get sick as a result of that, absolutely there is a potential claim there.
Railroads are not exempted or immune from liability as a result of their stature in this country. If they do something and their negligence or a defective product associated with the train or any of those things that I mentioned, cause an injury, you absolutely have a case. How good that case is, of course, is always going to depend on the injury and the facts of the case and how the derailment occurred, but it’s certainly something that’s worth pursuing.
Who Is Liable?
John: All right. Who do you have a case against? Who could you recover from as if you’re injured as a result of a train derailment?
Paul: Most likely you’ll have a potential recovery from the train company itself. I won’t name any names because that’s not appropriate for what we’re doing today, but there’s numerous train companies that are out there in the country and if it happens to be from human error because the engineer or the conductor didn’t do what they were supposed to do, then you’d have a case against the train company itself.
You could potentially have a case against the operator of the train so the individual in charge. They’re an employee of the company and so that liability is kind of intertwined a little bit, but certainly you have a case against both of them.
As I mentioned before, sometimes train collisions or train derailments can be caused by a defective product. It could be a brake failure, it could be a defect with the rails, it could be a defect of warning lights, it could be broken handrails, it could be the result of communication equipment that failed. In those instances, it’s not just the train company that could be held responsible. It could be the manufacturers of those companies that could also be held responsible if it can be proven that those defects or that there was a defect of those products that caused or contributed to the collision or to the derailment. That just has to come from investigation.
I mean, when a derailment occurs, all we know is that it happened. We know something went drastically wrong. I would contend that the derailment occurs, it’s not just some odd accident that we look the other way and say, okay, well hopefully it’ll turn out better next time. I mean, something went wrong, somebody was negligent. It was the result of a defective product and so when these things happen, we have to investigate.
That comes in the form of interviews of the parties that were involved, witnesses who saw the derailment occur. There’s something called the black box on these trains and I’m sure everybody knows what the black box is, but it’s electronic data that can provide some information. Maybe the train inexplicably sped up at a time when it wasn’t supposed to do that and the black box can give us that information. It can be a complicated investigation for sure, but certainly the people involved in the collision, the railroad company involved in the derailment, and a lot of product manufacturers who provided equipment that may have failed can all be held responsible for causing the derailment in any injuries that occur as a result.
When Outside Contractors May Be Liable
John: Could it be like maintenance workers as well? If maybe there was a part that was failing and the maintenance workers didn’t pick up on that failure in time or something like that?
Paul: Absolutely, or it could be a contractor that provided maintenance to the trucks or maintenance to the equipment and didn’t do such a good job in any of that. Yeah, there’s a lot of potential parties that could be responsible for causing these injuries. The railroads typically do have their own staff to perform maintenance, but that’s not going to be universal. There are plenty of outside contractors that come in and will do all kinds of work for railroads. That’s why the investigation’s so important.
Collisions at Railroad Crossings
John: We’re talking about train derailments in part because of this derailment, this high profile one that happened in Ohio recently. Other than train derailments, are there other types of situations where a railroad could be held responsible for maybe a collision with a car or with a person?
Paul: Absolutely. Probably an even more common occurrence is going to be a collision at a railroad crossing. Now, frequently, John, those are not the railroad’s fault or any railroad employees fault. Sometimes unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, people will negligently go onto a railroad track themselves.
They are trying to beat the train. Hopefully, it’s not a lot of times where people have some bad intentions for themselves, but there’s certainly a lot of situations where people will impermissibly be on railroad tracks when they shouldn’t be.
Then there’s going to be a whole category of collisions that occur that the railroads can be held accountable for. I’ll focus on Kentucky law because that’s where I am but in Kentucky law, at a public railroad crossing, the railroad has several duties. It has to give a warning. Their folks have to give a lookout. If there is an ability for them to stop a train when somebody’s on the tracks and they have sufficient opportunity to do so, they can’t just not act and say, well, that’s that person’s fault, they’re on the tracks.
Probably the most common situation that we see is a poorly maintained crossing. Everybody’s probably encountered one in the past where you have to inch up a little bit because there’s some trees or bushes or some sort of foliage that’s blocking your view down the track. The gate’s up, so you don’t know for sure that anything’s coming. The signal hasn’t rung, and people are trying to progress across the track, and they get hit. And so, railroads have a duty at a public crossing.
What’s a public crossing? To be as simplistic as possible, a public crossing’s one that’s on a state road, county road, a publicly maintained road. They have duties to maintain those crossings in a safe fashion. Again, that includes signals, gates, warnings and making sure that vision’s not obstructed down the track. When those situations occur under the right circumstances, a railroad can be held accountable for causing a collision.
Now, there’s also something called private railroad crossings. Private railroad crossings are a little bit different. Keep in mind the history of this country. I mean, railroads were the way of travel. They were the way of transporting goods across the country for many years before other forms of transportation really existed and became prevalent and so we have a lot of tracks going through this country.
We have a lot of tracks that now go through people’s properties that they’ve been given some access to. The railroad’s responsibility at those crossings are a little bit different. They don’t have the gate requirements, they don’t have the signal requirements and the only time that they can really be held accountable is if a crossing at a private crossing is categorized as something called ultra hazardous.
Ultra hazardous is kind of a nebulous term. It doesn’t have a great definition, but certainly a crossing that has a poor grade. You’ve crossed them before. Have to go up a steep hill a little bit and there’s a lot of gravel associated with it and it’s sometimes difficult to get over real easily, particularly in a normal passenger car. Under some circumstances, that’s been considered an ultra hazardous crossing.
Again, overgrown foliage around the crossing, particularly in conjunction with the poor grade can make a crossing that would ordinarily be safe and the railroad ordinarily had no duties, it can make it an ultra hazardous crossing that now requires the railroad to take certain precautions.
Railroads can assume duties of those crossings as well. If you’ve got a crossing that doesn’t really require a warning or require a gate or require a signal, but the railroad provides all those things and people get to rely upon them and then one day they don’t do those things, somebody gets hurt, an argument can be made that they’ve assumed the duty and now they’ve breached that duty by failing to do it under that particular circumstance.
The answer to the question may be there is no liability for the particular injury or event that happens to some people, but it’s always worth inquiring and asking because it could very well be that the railroad at issue failed lots of responsibilities, which directly led to a collision at a crossing.
Rail Companies’ Responsibilities at Crossings
John: Could the train’s responsibility or the train company’s responsibility in certain crossing cases, especially with the private land, just be that the train has to blow its horn a certain time before, half a mile before it gets to that crossing or something like that?
Then like you said, maybe there would be a case where, oh, the engineer forgot to blow the horn that one time and warn people that it was coming, something like that.
Paul: At a private crossing, they really don’t have to do those things unless they’ve assumed responsibility that they didn’t necessarily have to do. Really, their responsibility at a private crossing is to understand the lay of the land when they’re crossing, when their trains are passing through and if there is some reason to know that a particular crossing’s dangerous, this ultra hazardous type of crossing that we’ve talked about, then they have responsibilities at that point.
Nobody’s going to come up to them one day, no governmental agency, railroads are governed by the Federal Railroad Administration, nobody’s going to come up to them, more than likely, and say, okay, we’ve decided that this crossing right here is ultra hazardous so now you have to do all the things that you have to do at a public crossing. Usually, unfortunately, it takes one event to occur before a railroad’s really reasonably put on notice that a private crossing is particularly dangerous now.
Okay, public crossings, yeah, they have everything that you mentioned. They have all those duties. They have a duty of lookout. They have a duty of warning. Of course, they put the gates up, they put the lights up. I mean, all those things. If they didn’t do those things and somebody got hurt, well then they’ve failed a lot of responsibilities but at a private crossing, it’s really, do they have a reason to know or should know that there’s something unusual or unique about that crossing that is going to lead to injuries that they don’t do something.
Statute of Limitations on Train Collision and Derailment Injury Claims
John: Right, okay. Is there a statute of limitations for filing a claim for personal injury or death caused by a train derailment or a collision?
Paul: Sure. In Kentucky, it’s the same for any other personal injury case. You have a year from the date of the collision or the derailment to file a claim. Now, there’s some circumstances, if we use the chemical exposure example, some people may not realize that they’ve been injured from an exposure to a harmful chemical so they would have a year from the date they know or should know who they’ve been harmed by the chemical release from the derailment and know or should know what caused it.
To file a claim for wrongful death, they have a year to pursue a claim. That year really begins to run from when somebody’s been appointed, the personal representative, over their estate. The bottom line is that in most instances, people who have been injured as a result of either derailment or collision, they know immediately what caused the injury and they have a year to get that claim filed.
Then they need to move quickly because that year goes by fast and because of what I told you about a moment ago, that sometimes it’s not obvious as to exactly what caused the collision. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the railroad company, the operator of the train, or a product manufacturer who caused the derailment or the collision, it’s still a year, and we have got to have time to figure out who it is. Time is of the essence and it’s best to start investigating immediately.
What Should You Do If You’ve Been Injured by a Train Derailment or Collision?
John: What should someone do if they or a loved one or are injured from a train derailment or collision? Why would it be important that they speak with an attorney like yourself?
Paul: Well, again, sometimes it’s not easy to determine whether or not someone else was at fault for causing either the derailment or the collision. The derailment is an easier determination for sure. I mean, these trains aren’t supposed to derail, but they do. I’m not sure what the statistics are, but I’m confident that there’s hundreds, if not thousands of derailments every year.
Most of them are small and what’s considered a derailment is just a slight movement off of a track. Some are catastrophic where they leave the air and topple over and cause all kinds of problems.
Train collisions, sometimes a lot of people would say, well, guys, you’re on the tracks. I mean that you deserve, or don’t deserve, but you don’t deserve to recover from anybody for being somewhere where maybe you shouldn’t have been. Again, there’s so many facts that are associated with how it happened, and everything is bang bang so it’s critical to contact a lawyer. Contact a lawyer that has experience with litigating cases against railroad companies, handling train collisions, handling train derailments, and investigating as quickly as possible to try to uncover everything.
Then of course, as I mentioned just a moment ago, the statute of limitations, it runs fast. It runs very fast. Just waiting three months to talk to a lawyer now impedes that lawyer’s ability to conduct a full investigation because believe you me, the railroad company, as soon as the event happens, within minutes, they have somebody there and they’re conducting their investigation so they can determine what caused the collision. Frequently they come to conclusions that are contrary to the ones that we might come to had we been given all those facts because their mission is to avoid responsibility for these kinds of things. Every collision, every derailment, derailments in particular.
I mean, if you’ve released harmful chemicals into the air or harmful chemicals into the water, I mean, thousands of people are potentially impacted by that, I mean thousands. Most of these chemicals are not going to cause injury that’s going to immediately be noticeable in the next week or month even. I mean, it may be years before people really start to suffer the adverse consequences. The railroad’s going to have all that in their back pocket maybe before people even get sick.
It’s critical to reach out to someone, and the answer may be, we have to wait. Good news is, it doesn’t appear that you’ve been injured right now. Hopefully that’ll always be the case. Hopefully you’ll never get sick. Hopefully you’ll never have to talk to me or anybody else ever again about this. If the reality is that you do, memories aren’t better 10 years from now, they’re great today. The good news is with respect to derailments, a lot of people are collecting a lot of information right away and so it’s a little bit different from other types of things that I do.
John: Right, because of the investigations being done and things like that.
Paul: Absolutely. Some people are going to suffer, like this latest one that’s been in the news, some people are going to suffer more immediate consequences. It may just be property damage, maybe having to move from their home for a period of time while water is examined for harmful contaminants. Some people will be doing more investigation early than later.
Regardless, you can’t hurt to have a conversation. If the answer is there’s really nothing for you to do right now under the circumstances, then that’s fine. The answer could very well be, yeah, we need to get our ducks in a row. Even if you don’t have the case now, the work that we do now can help you later.
Contact Satterley and Kelley to Learn More
John: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Paul: Thanks, John, I appreciate it.
John: For more information about personal injury and wrongful death claims, visit the law firm of Satterley and Kelley at satterleylaw.com or call (855)385-9532.