http://www.ble.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=15020
I guess it would be safe to say that he’s a FORMER employee?
No he isnt this is the wreck that just ocured I ama suming. Since when are they suing us for rules infractions??? Jesus mary and pete this is scary!
There must be a very good reason for BNSF to sue an individual. Unless they are trying to prove a point, they surely would never recover much on the loss, so can’t be for
the monetary amounts. Unless the engineer’s last name is Buffett…?
Jimmy Buffett is an engineer? Who knew?[;)]
Wow! That will sure help the recruiting. Item 27on job description: “You break it, you own it!”
Jay
I am getting back into G town this week hopefully will get more info. I have sent this to a few guys from my class adn we are all wondering should we become engineers for this outfit? Scary scary scary… We have an engineer that whacked a set of cars and dumped fuel on the ground, but he didnt pay for it or got sued for it ( hell he got off the hook even) I am sure all over the BNSF we had incidents but come on why this guy? Makes no sense unless hes the BLE’s greiver wink wink.
It’s got to do with the way railroad injuries are mishandled. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if a railroad employee gets hurt on the job he/she sues the company. This isn’t the way it works elsewhere. An injured employee should be taken care of, but not like this.
This engineer aparently hired an attorney (there are those who specialize in this sort of thing) shortly after the wreck. If the BNSF had reason to believe they were going to be sued for a wreck that was his fault, and that’s a liability of millions of dollars, they have little choice but to file a counter action to protect themselves.
About 30 years ago two Frisco trains collied head on in Oklahoma. One crew had aparently ignored a meet point established by timetable. Injured crewmen who aparently went past the established meeting point sued the Frisco. The Frisco sued back. The jury awarded decent amounts of money to the injured crewmen to cover their injuries, then also awarded the railroad about $34 million from the crewmen because they wrecked two of its trains.
This ain’t nothin’ new. And it needs to be changed. The benifit is to the lawyers - not the crews or the companies. There’s a better way to do this. If someone makes a mistake and is injured on the job he/she should not have to worry about money and the railroad shouldn’t have to run a lottery that turns an injury into a Bonanza.
Didn’t the BN sue some crew members out in Wyoming or Colorado back in the 1980s for causing a rear end collision? As I recall it occurred under a hiway overpass and the BN was having a rash of accidents about then.
Don’t remember how it turned out.
Jeff