The Source for Railroad Injuries & Whistleblower Protection
Railroad defense lawyers love to file summary judgment motions because it delays the trial while padding their hourly bills. But the Federal Rail Safety Act now allows employees to turn such motions into a sword that guts the railroad’s defense.
The facts in Smith-Bunge v. Wisconsin Central, Ltd follow a familiar pattern. Todd Smith-Bunge felt…
Railroads are running out of defenses to the Federal Rail Safety Act. Their initial “election of remedies” gambit is dead and buried. Their second line of defense–charging employees who report injuries with “falsification and dishonesty”–has been obliterated by the “inextricably intertwined” principle upheld by judges and appellate courts. In desperation,…
Rail workers under management pressure to violate FRA safety regulations, take heart. Two ground breaking federal court decisions uphold your Federal Rail Safety Act right to be free from retaliation when you refuse to violate federal safety regulations.
Gregory Morgan v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., was brought by a Road Foreman after he was…
Twice in the same week, Pan Am Railways has been slammed with the statutory max in Federal Rail Safety Act punitive damages: once from a federal jury expressing its outrage at Pan Am’s profoundly unsafe culture and again from a Judge whose excoriating decision describes that culture in damning detail.
The federal jury verdict came…
Well over a year before its string of death and derailment, Metro North was subjected to the first Federal Rail Safety Act whistleblower jury trial in the nation, Barati v Metro North. During that trial, cross examination of the Heads of Metro North’s Safety, Training, and Track Departments exposed the disconnect between the Railroad’s…
Once again, the federal government is telling Metro North that its “discipline trumps safety” culture must change. OSHA’s Whistleblower Directorate has found Metro North violated subsection c(2) of the Federal Rail Safety Act in seven cases. In each case, the employee followed his doctor’s order to stay home because he could not safely perform his…
Today’s front page article in the New York Times exposes the fundamental problem with the rail management’s safety culture. When a mayor and her fire chief went to the site of a liquid gas derailment in their town, the railroad threatened to arrest them. Describing the railroad’s response to their legitimate concern over an obvious…
The second Federal Rail Safety Act jury trial in the nation has precipitated a primer on the award of FRSA attorney fees. In Brig and Buchala v. PATH, the jury found the Railroad violated the FRSA when it retaliated against two workers who complained when an unscheduled train nearly struck them. Here are excerpts…
There now are two formats for filing a Federal Rail Safety Act whistleblower retaliation complaint with OSHA: short form and long form.
On Line Short Form
OSHA recently gave workers the option to file a whistleblower complaint on line, using the form available at OSHA’s web site. This may be a good option for a worker…
The latest Federal Rail Safety Act district court decision confirms that the statutory jurisdiction of the federal courts over railroad whistleblower cases can not be limited by DOL regulations or actions.
After trackmen Donald Glista and William Orr reported injuries, Norfolk Southern Railway fired them for "conduct unbecoming" and for making "false and conflicting statements." For that blatant…