Mother sues CSX over trestle death of her son

[thelakelander]

Well.....the family won. 

A Clay County jury found CSX Transportation negligent in the May 2008 death of a 17-year-old football star who was hit by a train while fishing from a trestle, awarding his family about $1.6 million Tuesday in punitive damages.

http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2012-07-26/story/clay-jury-awards-16-million-family-teen-killed-csx-train

[carpnter]

What a crock of crap. 

[mtraininjax]

I think it is callous and irresponsible for the attorney representing the family to call CSX "grossly negligent" when his client's son was trespassing on the bridge and should not have been there in the first place. So because CSX did not have a fence around the bridge, armed guards to keep them away, the liberal attorneys score another ambulance victory for their customers. This is an example of what lawyers are doing to this country, be careful what you do, someone will sue you for hot coffee at McDonald's!

[Dog Walker]

Of course CSX was negligent.  They didn't have a system in place where a multi-thousand ton train could be stopped in a hundred feet like a car!  How dare they operate trains like this.  They should stop all train traffic immediately!

One of the reasons that railroad rights-of-way are No Trespassing zones.

Very sorry for this young man's family, but CSX wasn't at fault that their son was on the trestle.

[blizz01]

I'm going home to watch Stand by Me.....

[reednavy]

I think CSX should fight this, it's bullcrap.
http://www.news4jax.com/news/Jury-awards-train-accident-victim-s-parents-2-7M/-/475880/15697630/-/i2bi27/-/index.html

[finehoe]

...someone will sue you for hot coffee at McDonald's!

http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/

[Ocklawaha]

This is an example of what lawyers are doing to this country, be careful what you do, someone will sue you for hot coffee at McDonald's!

http://whenyouputitthatway.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/liebeck_thighs.jpg

http://travis.pflanz.me/assets/stella_liebeck_burned_by_mcdonalds_coffee-620x360.jpg

That hot coffee case wasn't what you thought it was... Like the man says, she wasn't driving, she was a passenger, and she's had to endure years of skin grafts as a result. This wasn't hot coffee, it was nearly to the point of becoming a gas (steam).

In the case of the railroad, there was no way to stop that train or ANY OTHER train. The only logical and workable solution would be a video monitoring system for the remote trestles with a hotline to the various sheriff's departments and to the owning railroad trainmaster - dispatching center.

[blizz01]

I wonder what - if any, fines were imposed on the 2 survivors....

[Ocklawaha]

Sorry this doesn't really feed into the 'litigious society' meme, but thats the way it is.

I assume that this bridge was constructed or acquired by CSX sometime after 1908?

http://www.youtube.com/v/Gk5-OAgJIZI?version=3&hl=en_US
This one couldn't stop on a dime either and you bet they wanted to!

Actually the bridge opened for business in 1881, it has been periodically updated ever since. A good part of our legal decisions and our perceptions is molded by the popular media, IE: 'Train kills teen on trestle,' 'train crushes automobile 5 dead,' 'train demolishes school bus...' etc. The headlines bend the truth to gloss over the obvious, 'Idiot drives around gates and under the front of a speeding train!'

[rcmmngs]

Hey Ock.  But it would be safe to say that CSX acquired the trestle after 1908, correct?

I wonder what - if any, fines were imposed on the 2 survivors....

based on what?

Private property, so that would be on CSX to prosecute them for trespassing.

Are you just hoping that the kids got punished for something?

You know, something more that watching one of their close friends die and feeling partially responsible for it for the rest of their lives?

[Ocklawaha]

Hey Ock.  But it would be safe to say that CSX acquired the trestle after 1908, correct?

You could probably interpret it that way, but the company that bought out the JT&KW, was bought by the Plant System, which was sold to The Atlantic Coast Line, which merged with The Seaboard Air Line to form the Seaboard Coast Line, which absorbed several other railroads to form The Family Lines, which was consolidated as The Seaboard System, which would merge with the Chesapeake and Ohio/Baltimore and Ohio/Western Maryland Railroads, who's legal departments labeled the deal with a simple C/S/X that REALLY DID stand for something until marketing got it and decided CSX was a cool name for a company which then proceeded to buy out 55% of Conrail (the former Penn Central), so yeah, {Ock takes a breath} I guess you could say CSX got it after 1908, but it's probably more accurate to say they owned it long before that... at least it was in the family. 

[blizz01]

Private property, so that would be on CSX to prosecute them for trespassing.

Are you just hoping that the kids got punished for something?

YES!  Absolutely.  Just like I'd hope that they'd be punished for climbing the fence at the airport & playing on the runway.

I'm pretty certain that this is Federal Law & goes beyond trespassing on private property. 

It is horrible that the young man was killed - horrible.  But at its core we ALL know better.  Do you think that they were surprised to see a train coming?  Really?  I grew up playing on the very same trestle.  I knew that we weren't supposed to be there & that if caught there would be a price to pay - that's what kids do. 

When bandits rob a bank & one gets shot, the others aren't off the hook...

[AKIRA]

There was a right kid to be killed.......?!

[Dog Walker]

Maybe OCK can tell us when the crossing gates began to be installed.  The huge death rates in the early years were probably due to unguarded crossings and more trains running than now.

Bet you that the railroads resisted installing crossing gates for as long as possible.

Were steam trains harder to stop the diesels?