When a jury awards an injured railroad worker millions of dollars, that’s not always the end of the story. Not by a long shot. Railroads have deep pockets, experienced legal teams, and a well-practiced playbook for challenging verdicts they don’t like. One example involved Norfolk Southern’s defense attorneys seeking a new trial after a West Virginia jury awarded an injured […]
How Railroads Fight Back: Legal Tactics Injured Workers Face in FELA Claims
FELA Rights as an Injured Railroad Worker
Most workers who get hurt on the job think about workers’ compensation first. File a claim, get your medical bills covered, receive a portion of your lost wages, and move forward. It’s a no-fault system — straightforward, if limited. Railroad workers don’t have that system. Instead, they’re covered by the Federal Employers Liability Act, or FELA, a federal law enacted […]
Fatigue on the Rails: How Sleep Deprivation Puts Railroad Workers at Risk
Railroad work doesn’t follow a 9-to-5 schedule. Trains run around the clock, across time zones, in every kind of weather. For the engineers, conductors, brakemen, and trackmen who keep those operations moving, the demands can be relentless. Irregular shifts. Extended hours. Unpredictable call times. Sleep schedules that get pushed, pulled, and compressed until there’s nothing left to give. That kind […]
Diesel Exhaust and Cancer Risk: What Railroad Workers Need to Know
Most people don’t think about what they’re breathing at work. You show up, you do your job, you go home. But for railroad workers, truckers, dock workers, and miners, the air around them every single day contains something far more dangerous than most of their employers want to acknowledge: diesel exhaust. This isn’t a fringe concern. It’s backed by decades […]