You probably know that your carrier pays workers that were injured on the job as a result of the carrier’s negligence. But what if the accident or injury was a little bit your fault?

Today we’ll explore why workers can still recover for their injuries, even when their own action was partly to blame.

If you’ve been following the blog, you know that as soon as you get hurt at work, the company springs to life to mitigate your claim, and may even do some tricky things behind your back.

You knew when you signed up for a career on the rails that the job working around 30+ ton cars was dangerous. And after a few years on the job, you might even consider yourself prepared for the less obvious dangers like track debris and unstable ground. In our last blog we covered 8 More Absurdly Common Railroad Safety Hazards featuring dangers like columns under dark bridges lacking reflective material.

Today we’re going to cover another danger – an attacker – and how the law can protect workers

This popped up in the news recently when a passenger reportedly pulled a knife on a NJ Transit conductor. Thankfully the incident didn’t result in injuries, but the dangers train workers face from the public is real, and not new.  (Railroad Worker's United keeps track of railroaders killed in the line of duty, which you can see here.) I represented another conductor a few years ago on NJT, also North Jersey Coast Line, who was jumped by a passenger.  In all cases, it's the carrier’s responsibility to provide reasonable protection against dangers of which it knew or should have known.