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• Railroad Accidents and FELA
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If You Are a Railroad Employee, Here Is What You Should and Should Not Do after You Have Been in an Accident.

Even though the railroad industry would like you think otherwise, working on the railroad continues to be a very dangerous job.
The Federal Railroad Administration continues to track fatalities and injuries of railroad workers and the numbers continue to surpass the average occupation(although the injuries seemed to have gone down over the years). The Federal Employers Liability Act affords railroad employees the right to recover damages for an injury incurred in interstate commerce where the injury results in whole or part from the negligence of any employees of the railroad or because of any defect due to negligence with the rail cars, tracks,roadbeds,machineryor other equipment. In New York, it means that the Long Island Railroad, Metro North and Amtrak are covered under the Federal Employers Liability Act. Even the new JFK Airtrain is covered.

The history of enactment of the FELA coincided with the rapid devlopment of the rail system and the industry's abuses and increasing employee loss of life. Indeed in 1907(before FELA) one trainman was injured out of every eight employees and one was killed out of every one hundred and twenty five employees.When congress enacted the FELA is "shifted" the burden of the costs of injuries from the employee to the employer. In fact in a very famous case Wilkerson vs McCarthy the Court said the idea behind the FELA was to "put on the railroad industry some of the cost for the legs,eyes,arms,and lives which it consumed in its operations".

Before the passage of the FELA, the common law had made it very difficult for the injured employee to recover anything from his employer. As a result, for humanitarian reasons, Congress did away with several common-law tort defenses that had effectively barred recovery for injured railroad employees. Specifically the Act abolished the fellow-servant rule, the doctrine of assumption of risk and contributory negligence. Contributory defense has now been replaced with comparative negligence. The FELA is not a workers' compensation statute and thus makes the basis of liability negligence and not that an injury occurs.

The history of the FELA is one that has made rail workers feel more secure in knowing that while working in a dangerous occupation they are protected from injuries due to negligence. If you are looking for a railroad lawyer and you live on Long Island or in New York, Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx call Goldstein and Bashner at 516-222-4000.

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