Train &Amp; Railroad Accidents | InjuryBoard Norfolk

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...

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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...

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I have been practicing law in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia (VA) for about two decades focusing on accidental injury and wrongful death cases. I have heard amazing stories about how million dollar automobile accident cases have gone to lawyers who really had no business handling such a case for all sorts of strange reasons. The suggestions for a person with an accident case in...

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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...

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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...

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Our firm uses the slogan "All we do is injury law" to summarize what our firm's focus is. However, there are really many types of cases within personal injury law. As a Virginia (VA) personal injury attorney, it always amazes me that clients may not fully understand what areas of law we practice in when we say we do injury law. I have had a client indicate that he didn't contact me about the...

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I have been working in the area of personal injury law nearly all the time for 18 years. During that time, I have learned lots of specific rules that are hidden in the statutes and case law pertaining to automobile wreck and other injury cases. Now, after having done injury work for so long, I feel that I know probably 97% of the rules applicable to handling personal injury cases and trying them...

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As a personal injury lawyer, it is important to use the AMA guides to permanent partial impairment to your client's advantage. AMA is the American Medical Association, which is the primary national professional group for doctors. They publish and periodically revise a book that sets forth how to quantify permanent partial impairments of various parts of the body after an injury. Most...

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In 18 years of practicing injury law, it has never stopped amazing me how insurance companies and corporate defendants will "lose" or outright destroy important evidence about a personal injury accident. It is often hard to prove that this loss of documents in a personal injury case was intentional. However, with big dollars on the line in a serious injury case, some corporate managers forget...

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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...

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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...

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The regional planners and chambers of commerce have been trying for a decade to come up with a unified name for Southeastern Virginia having settled on Hampton Roads. When I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia in the 1960's, this area was commonly called Tidewater. Whatever the name, the region containing a million and a half people really is a collection of smaller jurisdictions. A personal injury...

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In the recent past, the federal courts have changed their rules related to discovery to account for electronic information in civil cases such as wrongful death and personal injury files. Discovery is the process by which the injured person can get information and documents from the at fault party who hurt them. Lawyers representing injured people need to focus on these new rules and the...

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There was a huge fireball as a CSX freight train crashed south of Louisville, Kentucky today.CSX, as one of the two East coast railroad companies, puts many communities at risk. This freight train derailed with tank cars containing hazardous material forcing the evacuation of residents in Bullitt County. Our firm has represented victims of railroad train wrecks for years. We are currently...

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In a big recovery from a wrongful death or injury matter, structured settlements can make a huge difference for the client.Structured settlements are an important thing for a personal injury lawyer to know about and to explain to a client in any significant case. Structured settlements are an option under a special provision of the federal tax law that allows money received from personal...

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