In the United States, employees who work long hours to transport passengers and goods using the railroad system across the States face many dangers. The railroad workers face many potential hazards because of the nature of their occupation while playing an essential role in the country's economy. The Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA) offers all railroad workers an equal liability standard, forming the foundation of any legal claims for injuries suffered at work. You should seek compensation if you are a railroad employee and have suffered severe injuries at work. If your loved one who worked for a railroad firm dies in a railroad accident, you can consult an attorney with a record of successful FELA claims to assist you in building a solid case. The Workers Compensation Lawyer Law Firm has a professional reputation and the necessary resources to help you seek compensation. You can count on us for reliable legal representation in Los Angeles, CA.

The History Of Employers Liability Act (FELA)

In 1908, Congress passed a special Act to protect railroad employees. Railroad employees for decades had constructed important transportation lines that spanned the continent and interconnected the nation. However, they were always suffering injuries without receiving proper compensation. In addition, because of limited resources, railroads were more dangerous to work on then.

FELA was a remedy to the pressing issues because it gave employees a chance to sue for fair compensation. However, it also set less or more uniform liability standards for railroad firms and specific injury types and situations. In addition, FELA came up with different specific safety standards to which railroads are held.

FELA offers railroad employees a federal system to recover compensation for injuries suffered at work. FELA covers most injuries sustained by railroad workers, including signalmen, electricians, track workers, car cleaners, engineers, and conductors, and those of workers who do not necessarily work in trains. Typically, you can file a FELA claim directly with your railroad firm or file a suit in the federal or state courts.

Railroad Worker Injuries

Job-related injuries are common in the railroad industry because of the complex, heavy machinery involved and cramped or less-than-ideal workspaces. Injuries come in various forms, ranging from severe to minor. Common injuries include:

Catastrophic Injuries

These are types of injuries that could leave you enduring psychological, emotional, and physical scars. Catastrophic injuries affect every aspect of life. For example, severe burn injuries could fall under first, second, and third-degree burns. You could remain with psychological and emotional scars depending on the severity of the burn injury.

Traumatic Brain Injuries

This is a complex intracranial injury. It could be invisible but can leave you with severe permanent side effects. For example, forcefully hitting your head or suddenly hitting another object could cause this injury. Traumatic brain injury can be severe or mild. For example, a concussion is a mild head injury. You could recover fully from a concussion because it is treatable. However, an expensive brain injury could leave you with permanent memory issues and reduced mental functionality.

Cumulative Trauma And Repetitive Stress Injuries

A common injury you could suffer at a railroad company is cumulative trauma. It is also known as ''wear-out'' or repetitive stress injury. Repetitive motions could lead to injury because of overuse of one part of the body. The overused part that could wear out faster include the hip, knees, back, and hands, which often suffer damaged tendons, muscles, and nerves. You could experience weakness and pain or experience signs like burning, numbness, and swelling. Railroad employees develop repetitive stress injuries at various rates. However, they all happen because of your body's positions and movements daily.

Hearing Loss And Deafness

The hearing loss problem results from the noise encountered in the work environment, especially in railroad companies. Hearing loss happens when noise enters the ears' auditory system via the ear canal to the eardrum. If your ear is exposed to too much noise for too long, the hair cells of the ear are overstimulated. This is the point where the auditory loses the senses. Often, hearing loss goes unnoticed, but it is preventable.

The Guidelines For FELA Compensation

Generally, FELA constitutes of three types of compensation, including:

  • Past and future mental distress, pain, and suffering
  • Past and future lost wages
  • Past and future medical expenses

If the injured railroad employee eventually dies because of the injuries, their children or spouse could be eligible for the compensation. If there are no children or spouses, other relatives like parents would be entitled to compensation.

The Procedure For Successful FELA Claim

Since a reasonable settlement beats a lousy verdict, a FELA settlement should preferably be settled before reaching the court. Your attorney can help you present your settlement or demand letter when you learn the extent of your injuries. The agent for the FELA claim can submit a general theory of the accident, including information regarding your injuries, an opening demand, and the case details. Your attorney and the claim agent will deliberate various items of evidence, including statements, photographs, and medical records, to increase the likelihood of a fair settlement.

FELA Compensation Court Hearing

Your attorney will prepare you for a court hearing in the weeks before the beginning of the hearing. You and your attorney will have to do the following:

  • Send out witness subpoenas
  • File legal briefs with the court
  • Arrange doctors for live or video testimony
  • Select, copy, and prepare exhibits

Other parts that constitute the trial process include

  • Jury selection
  • Hearing your case
  • Hearing the defense case
  • The verdict

Sometimes, there could be post-verdict motions and, in some cases, an appeal.

During your lawsuit hearing, you must provide sufficient evidence that you are eligible for compensation for your injury. The company will cross-examine your witnesses and use its witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that your lawsuit is not valid because of injury details and the accident.

The jury will discuss the details of your case before making a judgment, which could last minutes to hours. The jury could send notes asking for the testimony to be read or to review the evidence. During the judgment discussion, your attorney and the company could feel anxious as you attempt to interpret the jury’s thoughts. At times, both parties could try to settle the matter by assessing the jury’s questions or if they feel the judgment will not favor them.

Finally, after the deliberations, the judgment comes, and the judge will allow some time by which attorneys should file motions to contest the ruling or appeal the verdict in the next court. However, most lawsuits end at the final judgment.

Liability And FELA Claims

You need not provide evidence of liability under the no-fault Workers' Compensation system to file a claim. FELA only needs you to show how the railroad firm played a role in your injury through negligence. The evidence required in a Federal Employers Liability Act claim is a ''featherweight burden of proof''. It means that your company showed some negligence, even if the negligence was minor compared to the severity of your injuries. You are only required to provide evidence of violating one of the FELA rules that caused your injury.

A FELA attorney often works with other professionals to settle complex liability matters and to look into your company's compliance with federal workplace standards. Additionally, your attorney would major in doing the following:

  • Providing honest, informed guidance about your FELA claim against your railroad firm or your third-party lawsuit against a third party.
  • Carrying out a thorough investigation of the accident with the assistance of industry professionals in accident reconstruction
  • Assessing the financial aspect of your FELA claim based on the total current impact of the injury and its projected future impact on your life and finances

FELA also offers guidelines for employee safety standards in the railroad industry, even if its primary purpose is to provide legal remedies for injured railroad employees. Railroad companies need to provide a reasonably safe work environment. The employee has to prove the firm failed to do so, and this negligence led to their injuries. In addition, the Federal Employers Liability Act demands that railroad companies do the following:

  • Implement safety guidelines
  • Provide a reasonable safety work environment, along with safety devices and safety tools and equipment
  • Prevent unreasonable work quotas
  • Provide workers with adequate supervision, training, and assistance to fulfill their work requirements
  • Ensure that workers are safe from intentionally damaging acts of others

The Value Of Your FELA Lawsuit

Some injuries could need extensive physical therapy, raising your lawsuit's value. The value could also go up if your injuries cannot allow you to resume the work you did before the accident. An experienced attorney in FELA claims can assist you in coming up with a reasonable value for your lawsuit, which could lie between the best-case scenarios that you consider acceptable.

Settling Of FELA Lawsuit

Your FELA lawsuit could be settled two months after your initial demand. Then, you will know the expected outcome, and your railroad company will be put on hold as they wait for guidance. The law allows your attorney to file a lawsuit if no settlement is reached. Your attorney could choose to file the claim with the state or federal court, but the procedure remains the same.

The railroad company will have 30-60 days to submit an answer once the complaint is filed. The court-scheduled conference will follow, putting a discovery plan in place. Both sides will learn more about the other side's evidence during discovery. The process involves:

  • Paper discovery is the exchange of medical records and other crucial documents
  • Depositions give each attorney a chance to question the witnesses of the opposition
  • Expert discovery is the process during which the carrier opts for expert reports turned over by your attorney. These could be accident reports as well as medical reports.

Your railroad firm will have a chance to choose a doctor to examine you, and your attorney will receive a report of the examination that will be presented to your doctors.

The insurance carrier could file motions on completion of the expert discovery phase. Often, the insurance carrier will ask the court to dismiss your case or a piece of evidence. Your attorney could respond by opposing the motion. Usually, the parties will make an effort to settle the case during the pending motions, or they could as well wait until the court determines the motion. Both parties could have a solid grasp of the other party's case when motions are filed. The judge could advise both attorneys to find a resolution. Often, the final phase in a FELA lawsuit is the court hearing. The hearing could last a year from the time of filing a case.

Optional Dispute Resolution In A FELA Claim

Often, not all FELA claims will end at trial. In most FELA claims, the court will order an optional dispute resolution. For example, the court could recommend that you and your company settle via arbitration, mediation, or compulsory settlement conferences, and the court hearing will be the final option. Often, optional dispute resolution could lead to a settlement without a court hearing.

Comparative Negligence In A FELA Defense

The Federal Employers Liability Act provides railroad companies with the possibility of comparative negligence but also offers railroad employees a high level of protection. A comparative negligence defense offers your company a chance to allege that you also contributed to your injuries. Typically, a jury will decide whether you or your company should be responsible for your injuries. You could be assigned a percentage of faults, which could negatively affect the number of damages you could receive.

Settlement Of FELA Claim

Railroad claim agents are often determined to settle claims with you as fast as possible and will offer you a settlement immediately as long as you commit not to hire an attorney. This could be tempting, mainly if the accident were somehow straightforward. You could also be tempted if you feel confident that you do not need to seek further medication. There could be a time when you will need a settlement to cover your lost wages, pain, and suffering. However, you must avoid taking quick payments. Being patient and pursuing your claim slowly could help you determine the following:

  • How much your injury cost in medical expenses
  • How much money you lost in wages

Accepting a quick settlement is a bad idea because there are some things that you will probably not be aware of, like:

  • Being unaware of whether you will suffer complications from your injury a few months or years down the line that need further, expensive medical procedures.
  • Being unaware of how long you will be out of work. Depending on your doctor's projections of the typical healing time of a similar injury, you may have a vague idea. However, each person's body is different, and there could be setbacks, particularly if you resume your work too soon.
  • Being unaware of how your injury could affect your future employment chances. Perhaps you understand that you will not manage to continue working on the railroad until you secure another employment and know how well you can deal with it. However, you will not see how the injury will affect your future earning capacity.

It is common for people to accept a settlement with the claims adjuster only to learn later that:

  • They have to secure another job without the knowledge that the injury could make it hard to function properly at that job, and they have to quit too.
  • Since they accepted a quick settlement, they are no longer eligible for compensation to cover unexpected future medical procedures required to deal with the complications from the injury.
  • They have been demoted from their former job because of the injury, and now they earn much less.

Statute Of Limitations Of FELA

There is a statute of limitations on how long you can wait before you file the lawsuit after your accident, just like other personal injury lawsuits. Usually, you can file a lawsuit up to three years after the date of the injury. However, you will lose your right to file forever if you wait longer than that.

On the other hand, there are circumstances where the date of discovery of the injury is used instead of the date of injury. For example, if you develop a bad back or lung cancer because of the conditions at the workplace, there is no single date of injury. You would have no way of knowing what that date was, even if there were. In these cases, you need to start acting on the day you discover, or you should reasonably have known of, the injury. It could be the date your doctor examined you, informing you that the condition is likely to have been caused by the railroad job environment.

Additionally, the statute of limitations would begin from the injury's discovery date for most occupational ailments caused by chemical exposure, asbestos exposure, and mesothelioma. However, at times, there could be exceptions for extenuating situations. Therefore, even if you have gone beyond three years, you can still consult an experienced FELA attorney to see if there is an option to pursue compensation for your injury.

The Difference Between Ordinary Workers’ Compensation And FELA Compensation

There are pros and cons of facing the FELA system compared to ordinary workers' compensation. Unlike workers' compensation, FELA is not a no-fault system. Instead, you must provide evidence that a railroad company's negligence caused your injury. However, on the other hand, workers' compensation imposes a limit on the amount you can collect in most cases, while under FELA, there is no artificial cap for most accidents. It simply depends on the value of the injury and the calculation of the amount of pain and suffering according to tort law.

There is a misconception that not all injuries are automatically covered under FELA. The fact is that this is false; most injuries do end up being compensated. Under FELA, even the tiny bit of negligence on the railroad firm that causes injury or death of a worker is covered. You do not have to provide evidence that your company caused your damage. You merely need to show that your company's negligence contributed to your injury.

Similarly, it is true that compensation under FELA is only due if your employer engages in interstate business, but most railroads do. Therefore, it is not a huge limitation, and if you are not eligible based on that, then you could qualify for workers' compensation benefits.

Under workers’ compensation, it is required that you sustain the injury ‘’at work’’, which is also not a huge limitation. ‘’At work’’ is a generous interpretation. For example, you could suffer from a bad back that you first experienced while sleeping at home. However, a doctor who examined you agrees that your back gradually suffered from the strain of working on ballast at the railroad, then you suffered an injury at work. Any type of injury with any reasonable connection to your working conditions is eligible for compensation. You could receive your compensation if you consult an experienced railroad worker injury attorney. It does not matter whether it is head trauma, a broken bone, loss of hearing, or a pulled muscle.

Find a Workers Compensation Attorney Near Me

If you are a railroad worker and have suffered injuries at work, your situation is unique regarding how to receive compensation for a work-related injury. You need to consult a trusted railroad worker injury attorney to assist you in obtaining your deserved compensation. The Workers Compensation Lawyer Law Firm has the expertise to deal with your case and win you the highest possible claim under federal and state law. We understand how the system works under California's workers' compensation and FELA. We have helped many railroad workers seek reasonable settlements for their injuries in Los Angeles, CA. We will do the same for you. Call us at 424-501-9228 to speak to one of our attorneys.