Why Railroads Fight Accident Cases Tooth and Nail

There are a lot of reasons why railroad accidents on the job end up going further in litigation sometimes even to trial at a higher rate than your typical automobile accident injury case.

One of the main reasons is that the railroads fight these cases tooth and nail.  The railroads have nearly unlimited resources and don’t even rely on insurance until you’re talking about reinsurance at the level of $40 million so the railroads have their own in‑house litigation departments and teams of field claims agents in every location where they do business.

It’s as if the railroad had all of Allstate or State Farm working for them as in‑house adjusters.  So even though the car insurance companies are often very stingy and unfair these days causing more cases to go into suit, the railroads are even worse.

The railroad claims agents will often drag things out and try to wear the railroad worker and their family down through dragging the matter into court.  Because they have all of the lawyers they need and enough money to pay them all the railroads can simply fight, fight, fight until the bitter end and only settle the case fairly on the eve of trial.  As an experienced Virginia FELA lawyer battling the railroads on behalf of injured railroad workers I know how they play.

Additionally, it is amazing how often the railroads seem to hide information even from their own lawyers.

I was handling a deposition of some railroad supervisors just the other day and low and behold they come up with other photographs of the accident scene that they hadn’t bothered to send me before.

I had been asking for these photographs for a long time through the regular court process.  This is a fairly common way of doing business.  They claim that it’s not intentional but I think it is a culture of the fighting to protect the corporation’s bottom line at the expense of the railroad workers who give their bodies and their lives to keep the trains running.

The Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Hampton based railroad injury/FELA law firm, Cooper Hurley, handles railroad worker’s injuries and injuries on rail crossings as well as automobile, truck, and motorcycle injuries and slip and fall cases, wrongful death and medical malpractice.  John Cooper and Jim Hurley have over 40 years of combined experience in handling catastrophic injury claims.  Attorney John Cooper has been named to Virginia “Super Lawyers” since 2010.
Cooper Hurley represents families who have lost a loved one through another party’s fault in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News and throughout VA, and north eastern North Carolina. We always put the best interests of our clients first. The firm is recognized by other lawyers as “AV” by Martindale-Hubbell, a national attorney rating service, for our top level of legal skill and highest ethical standards. If you need help or advice about a serious injury, please call us or contact us through this website.