Close to three years ago, John*, 34, was an assistant signalman with three years on the job with LIRR.

One morning while running innerduct under a platform, a large piece of concrete debris – a leftover from an old platform – broke off pinching his right wrist and trapping him under the platform. A coworker had to lift the concrete off his wrist. What he thought at the time was an injury he could work through and recover from, turned out to be career ending.

John reported his injury and was temporarily removed from service pending a visit to an orthopedist the next day. That began 22 months of referrals to specialists and four separate EMG studies, because John developed clawing of his ring and pinky fingers. With that also came 50% loss grip strength in his right, dominant, hand. The railroad medically disqualified him from his job 10 months later.

This month a jury ordered LIRR to pay John more than $3 million for his injury after it was revealed that the railroad knew about the old hazardous concrete but didn’t make any effort to remove it. What is remarkable about this case is how the verdict numbers break down:

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:

When a client asks me, ‘When does the railroad have to pay after trial?” I have to say, “It depends, because the fight isn’t over after the verdict.”

You’ve probably seen this yourself. You hear your buddy won a couple of million suing the railroad, but he hasn’t seen a dime yet. Most think that once the jury has spoken, the railroad has to pay up. Wrong. In fact, that is where the railroads really excel, because they enter into a starvation mode, where their financial resources come to bear in an effort to starve you out.

Here’s how:

There are generally two additional bites at the apple after a successful verdict. Take my client with a devastating eye injury. He was awarded $3.75 million dollars and hasn’t seen a penny.

If you’ve been hurt on the railroad your first question is probably, do I have a case? Once you decide the answer is yes, almost assuredly, the next question is how much is my back injury claim worth? How much is my finger injury worth? How much is my knee injury case worth?

They’re important questions, because you want to make sure that the value of what you could recover from a settlement or trial is worth your time and sharing a portion of any recovery on legal fees.

There isn’t a calculator where you can enter an equation like:

Shoulder injury x 2 surgeries x 4 months off the job = Y dollars  

But you can get some idea of the worth of your claim by looking at several factors that we’ll take a look at in this post.

Three weeks after his 30th birthday, my client started working for the railroad as a temporary employee in the track department. He had previously worked for the county as a tree climber and for Poland Spring delivering water.

Six months later, on his first day as a permanent employee, my client, whom I'll call "John", was pulling pin spikes in the tunnels using a claw bar and a half washer, a technique created by the railroad. It was a tough spike, and he and his partner did what they had been trained to do, muscle it out.  But the spike head was corroded, and the heat-treated washer popped through in an instant.

Less than half a second later, John was on his knees clutching his right eye. In the ambulance and at the hospital, John was told they did not expect to save the vision in that eye.

After the accident, John learned the railroad had a hydraulic spike puller which could have been used in lieu of the manual technique.  

At the hospital he learned he had a ruptured globe. When the washer hit John’s eye, it sliced it open from 12 o’clock to 3 o’clock, which led to five surgeries, 29 weeks lost work and a net loss wage loss of $27,000.