Blog Topic

Civil Lawsuits Filed in Los Angeles County Train Accident Case
April 29, 2008

61 victims of the train accident that occurred in downtown Glendale, California, in which Juan Manuel Alvarez parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the tracks in an unsuccessful bid to commit suicide, have filed a civil lawsuit against the Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The arguments in the lawsuits include the fact that better safety measures would have prevented Alvarez from accessing the tracks. They also mention that the controversial push-pull system, which has many rails safety experts upset and calling for its elimination, played a huge role in the train accident.

On January 6, 2005, Alvarez, who had been estranged from his wife, parked his Cherokee on the railroad tracks. His intention, he later told police, was to kill himself when the train crashed into his vehicle. Things went the way he planned, at the beginning. He parked his Cherokee, and the train came barreling toward him. When the train accident occurred, there were 11 people dead and more than 180 passengers injured. Alvarez, however, was still alive. Apparently he had aborted his suicide attempt at the last minute, but did not or was not able to move his Jeep.

In the weeks that followed, investigators mulled over whether the man intended to kill anybody else or not, and what his real intentions were. A criminal case was filed against him, and a trial is set to begin.

Meanwhile, a civil trial that seeks compensation for victims of the train accident puts much of the blame squarely on the Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. While the media has made a splash about Alvarez' role in this tragedy, attention has been focused away from one of the deciding factors in this crash - the push-pull system, which was operating at the time of the train accident.

The push-pull system has been found by rail safety experts to be very dangerous, with great potential to cause deaths and injuries in a train accident when the engine is at the rear end. So great is the danger, that the passenger cars that are leading the train are often called "coffin cars" to denote the slim possibility of surviving a crash. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Tradesmen have been lobbying for an end to a system they say puts passengers at unnecessary risk of fatality in a train accident. In experiments conduced, it was seen that in crashes where the engine was pulling, the damage to passenger cars was minimal, and very few of them toppled over. When the engine was pushing on the other hand, passenger cars were thrown about and suffered major damage.

The reason why the system is still in place is because the other alternative is too expensive. This is just another instance of agencies putting profits before safety of the passengers. When tax payers ride a train they don't expect to be hurt in a train accident because the agency hasn't seen fit to use those tax dollars and train fares to design and implement a safer system. Regardless of Alvarez's lunacy and whether he meant to cause the crash or not, the LACMTA has a lot to answer for. We hope this lawsuit will be the beginning of long over due changes in the rail systems.

If you have been injured in a train accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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Defective New Jersey Transit Trains Cause Anxiety
April 11, 2008

If there were ever any indication of a terrible tragedy just waiting to happen, this would be it. At least six incidents of doors opening while the train was in motion have been reported on the New Jersey Transit trains. In most of the incidents, passengers were standing in the vestibule just inches from the doors, when the doors opened on their own. They remained open for almost a minute until conductors came scurrying to close them.

According to the NY Times, opening doors have not been the only terrifying ordeal passengers on New Jersey Transit trains have faced in the past two months. In February, as a train left the station, the third and fourth passenger cars came uncoupled leaving them unhooked to an engine. Both these types of incidents have not claimed any lives, at least not in recent times.

In 2006 however, a man was killed when he was caught in the doors of a New Jersey Transit train and then dragged along the platform. His family filed a lawsuit against New Jersey Transit, and the agency promptly fired two conductors and an engineer who were working on the train. According to Patrick Reilly, chief of the United Transportation Union, which represents the conductors, the two conductors were made scapegoats in the incident. The fault, he claims, lay with the faulty and inadequately maintained trains themselves.

Reilly is turning into a strong voice for more safety and maintenance checks on New Jersey Transit trains. It seems that in an attempt to better on-time performance records, New Jersey Transit is turning a dangerously blind eye to the maintenance of its equipment. Cars that should be in the yard or being serviced are routinely pressed into service, Reilly claims. To optimize efficiency, car models are sometime mixed up, leading to synchronization errors which were probably what caused the passengers cars to come unhooked from the engine back in February.

All these facts are frightening, and point to a disaster just waiting to happen. As recently as March, a man was caught between the train doors, but managed to extricate himself. What if he hadn't been able to free himself? Worse still, what if it had been a child trapped? Do we really have to wait until there is a horrible tragedy before we take action?

Thousands of passengers take transit trains every day to get to work. With the responsibility of so many passengers resting on the quality of its machines, New Jersey Transit has a responsibility to make sure that passengers are safe. Doors opening six times in two months is too large a number for comfort. The attitude of New Jersey Transit has been far from satisfactory, according to the NY Times report. Officials seem to be more concerned about painting a rosy picture of the safety scenario at the agency, than addressing the potential dangers of the issue. We hope the next time we read about this story, it will be about the trains being overhauled and serviced, not about an accident that didn't have to happen.

If you have been injured in a train related accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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Settlement in Train Accident in Graniteville, South Carolina
April 08, 2008

Avondale Mills and Norfolk Southern have settled for an undisclosed amount in lieu of the $420 million that Avondale Mills was claiming. The settlement is related to the train accident in Graniteville, South Carolina in 2005 that Avondale claims led to the closure of its mill.

When the train accident occurred on the night of January 6, 2005, rail cars containing deadly chlorine gas exploded. The gas leaked into the air infiltrating the atmosphere across the part of town close to the mill where people were still soundly asleep. Mill workers sleeping at Graniteville's mill remember waking up to find thick gas seeping into the mill. Apparently, the large ventilator fans had sucked the gas right into the mill. Nine people died, 8 of them as early as within an hour after the incident.

Those who died were mourned by their loved ones, and those who were injured were treated for their injuries, but the town of Graniteville effectively died the day of the accident. The toxic chemical spills that occurred when the rail cars exploded required cleaning up, and most of the mill's 1600+ workers were put to the task. With no workers to run the mill, Avondale had to close it. The mill employed many in the town, and with its closure, Graniteville began slipping slowly into neglect and despair. A group of investors are currently looking at proposals to stimulate economic growth by investing in the area, but as of now unemployment rates are still high. In this town, the boom from the railroad car explosion reverberates still.

At the time of the accident, railroad cars were exempt from safety measures that require notification to local emergency services when hazardous materials were being transported through the area. The Graniteville disaster led to changes in rail safety measures through out the country. The city of Columbia has implemented what it calls a "reverse 911" system that sends warning messages to all telephones in the danger zone. There are also reports that text message providers are also grappling with the technicalities of such a service to cell phone users. Earlier, railroad officials were solely entrusted with safety measures for transport of goods. Now federal officials have taken over many of the procedures, and railroads can be held accountable and liable for non-compliance.

Safety standards for railroad cars containing hazardous material such as those that exploded in Graniteville have been revised, and made more stringent. For citizens of Graniteville who have had their immediate surroundings polluted by the chlorine spill, the US Environmental Protection Agency has announced a grant to conduct an assessment of the soil in and around Graniteville.

While these are all welcome steps, they don't address the immediate desperate needs of the Graniteville people. These are people whose livelihoods have been shattered, and are in danger of falling off the public radar as more and more time goes by, and people forget about the tragedy at Graniteville.

If you have been injured or a loved one has been killed in a train wreck, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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