Mass Transit (Airline, Cruise Ship, Train, Bus)

• Railroads Try New End Run Around FELA Jury Verdicts: Motions For Verdict Offset Due To Railroad Retirement Collateral Source Payments

  John Cooper | January 07, 2009 8:42 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  The new strategy for railroads in railroad worker personal injury cases (FELA cases), is to try to reduce the sums juries are requiring them to pay by filing legal motions that ask judges to give...

• FELA Attorney, John Cooper, Wrote Recent Article About Remote Control Operations (RCO) of Freight Trains.

  John Cooper | September 08, 2008 3:21 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Have you ever heard of a freight train going down the tracks with no one in the engine compartment of the locomotive? A train with no engineer sounds like a headless horseman. Unfortunately, that...

• CSX Stock Up 58% Because of Mismanagement?

  John Cooper | June 30, 2008 4:03 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  All the railroad stocks have done well in recent years, the stock of CSXT may have increased not just because of increase in freight and the higher cost of gasoline but also because of the...

• Are Government Subsidies to Railroads Serving The Public Interest?

  Rick Shapiro | April 11, 2008 11:35 AM | 2 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  The nation freight railroads such as CSX and Norfolk Southern (NS) are posting healthy profits, but should state and federal governments be paying Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads for...

• Railroad FELA Verdict in Portsmouth, Virginia (VA)

  John Cooper | July 10, 2007 9:05 AM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  In August of 2003, John Wilson, a former conductor for The Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad, was injured when a fence pole hit his shoulder while he was on the side of a train car. Wilson, a United Transportation Union local chairman, filed a FELA claim against the railroad company he worked for because of this close clearance problem on the line servicing the Ford Motors plant. The...

• Loss of arm or leg injuries in railroad work

  John Cooper | June 02, 2007 2:37 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Railroad workers face the real threat of having the loss of a limb occur as a result of unsafe job conditions on the railroad. I know this because I am a law partner in an injury firm whose practice is focused on injuries to railroad workers who get hurt on the job. There are over 150,000 people each year who lose a limb.Railroad workers face the real threat of having the loss of a limb occur...

• Train Accident Lawyer From Norfolk, Virginia (VA)

  John Cooper | May 15, 2007 2:57 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  I live in Norfolk, Virginia (VA), the home of Norfolk Southern Railroad. I have been doing automobile accident injury cases in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) for about a decade before I joined my current firm of Hajek, Shapiro, Cooper, Lewis, and Appleton, PC. That was in 1997 and since that time I have been doing train wreck and FELA cases for railroad workers who get hurt on the...

• Railroaders dismounting off of moving equipment in the past is basis for FELA (Federal Employers' Liability Act) claims today.

  John Cooper | May 14, 2007 3:18 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Until the 1980's and 1990's, the major U.S. freight railroads routinely had train crews getting on and off moving railcars.At different times they used this dangerous practice at CSX and Norfolk Southern and the predecessor railroads like Conrail. Even after the railroad made a new rule saying it was dangerous to get off and on moving equipment, it took awhile for the practice to stop...

• Fatal Railroad Crash Caused By Fatigued Crew

  John Cooper | March 27, 2007 3:06 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  The National Transportation Safety Board finally acknowledged in March of 2007 that a overtired transportation crew was the reason for a head on collision of two freight trains in Mississippi almost two years ago that killed four people. This train wreck involved the failure of a crew to comply with the stop signal. The four people killed were the two crew members on each train. The final...

• Coal Train Derails But No one Hurt

  John Cooper | March 23, 2007 11:34 AM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  On March 19, 2007, a Norfolk Southern coal train derailed in Suffolk, VA. At 2:00 a.m., the train with 4 locomotives was traveling at 40 mph when 37 of the 148 cars left the track. The train wreck left a pile of twisted metal and tons of coal on the ground and cutoff the power to 1,000 customers.According to the news release, there were no injuries or any release of hazardous material. The...