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.

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.

In my last blog about the everyday dangers railroad workers face on the job, I shared nine photos of on-the-job hazards that led to injuries for my clients. Unfortunately for employees, it wasn't hard to dig up a bunch more.

Each of these photos represents a failure by the railroad to ensure a safe work environment for its workers. That's eight instances where a carrier negligence violated FELA, the law that protects rail workers.

See if you can spot the safety hazards in each of these pictures. I bet you encountered some of them on your last shift.

All photos by Marc Wietzke

Next to “How much is my case worth?” questions about the timing and duration of lawsuits are the ones I hear most often from railroad workers.

Timing is critical to lawsuits. If they’re going to protect their rights, workers need to know the window in which they have to report an injury, file an FELA suit or file a whistleblower claim.

This blog will answer those questions along with tougher, more, it-depends-on-your-situation queries like, “When will I get paid?” and “How long will my trial last?”

Read on for 10 answers to the most often asked timing-related questions about FELA injury and whistleblower claims.

 

1. How long do I have to report an injury?

There is no legal requirement. I know your company rules say to report it immediately or possibly by the end of your shift. But I am here to tell you that with the whistleblower amendments to the Federal Railroad Safety Act, you cannot (validly) be brought up on any kind of discipline charges for late report of injury. That is, so long as the delay was in good faith. In other words, report the injury when you know you have one. If that is two days later because the pain and soreness is not going away, then so be it.

Should I tell my lawyer?

The attorney-client relationship is a special one. Your railroad attorney is one of those people who needs to know your dark secrets and embarrassing history. (Like a doctor, your lawyer is required to keep it private.) Only by knowing what can be used against you, can your lawyer protect against the bias that such information can bring with it.

For example, I've had the railroad try and smear my client at trial by asking irrelevant questions about a DUI conviction from years before the accident. Because my client had already told me the details, I was able to show the jury just how ridiculous it was for the railroad to be bringing it up a trial.

In this post I’ll give you two examples of how being open and honest with me helped some of my past clients succeed in court, and one example where what the client kept from me meant a lawsuit doomed from the start.

So you're out of work on an injury. You go back-and-forth to the doctor’s offices. You go back and forth to the pharmacy. But there are lots of hours when you either sit at home or try and live as much of a normal life as you can. Did you ever consider that the railroad had someone following you and videotaping your every move? Because it happens more often than you realize. Eavesdropping and surveillance of employees by the railroad is common practice.

At first blush, it feels like a complete invasion of your privacy. But when you understand that the railroad begins from a position of distrust, you come to understand why they do it.  The railroad is trying to collect proof of you doing something which you or your doctors have said you cannot do.

If you've been hurt, you already know what money you're out of pocket.

You know those bills you couldn't pay. You probably know how to put together a wage loss claim for past wages.  (If not, here is a link to a wage loss calculator that takes the work out of coming up with your wage loss. It even allows you to include lost overtime.)

But if your injury is going to keep you out of work into the future, and you either want to settle your case now, or you’ll never return to work, then you have something called future wage loss.  Figuring out how much you will lose in the future can be a little more speculative, but if you take the right factors into consideration, you can have a solid basis to make a claim for the money that you’ll lose down the road. 

In this blog I’ll explain how to calculate future wage loss with an example from a recent trial that I brought to verdict.

But your boss is like a gnat in the room.

Tell him to leave because he’s already violated federal regulation.

The Federal Railroad Administration has long said it is a violation of federal anti-harassment regulations to enter the examination room of an injured employee except in two limited instances. But I am astounded how often it continues to happen and how many employees think they have to put up with it.

In this post I explain how the law prohibts this kind of supervisor action and what you should do if you experience it after a railroad injury.

 

When you get hurt at work on the railroad, what the company does behind your back could be worse than your injury.

Take for example, a shoulder injury or knee injury, both common injuries for railroad workers:

 

 

You reported your injury because you were too hurt to work, not because you wanted the railroad to pay up. Reporting it was the right thing to do. The railroad will discipline you if you don’t report an injury. But from the railroad’s perspective, “paying up” is always where this road leads and it’s prepared for court before you even decide to seek a shoulder surgery settlement or sue for your knee replacement.

In this post we’ll look at what happens inside the railroad when you report an on-the-job injury.

Here are four important behind-the-scenes moves you should be on the look out for if you filed an injury claim:

Why the quick cash could leave you poorer in the end.

Your accident seems straight forward. You think you know your injury. You’re relatively confident you won’t need more medical treatment. You want to make up for your lost wages and pain and suffering, as quickly as possible. The railroad claim agent has said, "Give me a chance to settle with you before you get a lawyer."

In this blog we’ll look at why giving the railroad a chance to quickly settle your claim could leave you poorer in the end.

Setting aside the factors you do know, like how much you lost in wages, let’s take a look at the factors that you don’t know and how they can lead to a premature decision to settle with the railroad. Here are three things you don’t know, and how they could hurt you, if you rush to settle with the job.