http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... /601100339

I have highlighted the important part- a young man - who I am about 99.9999999 sure is illegal - is killed by a train- a Portland lawyer( those ambulance chasers again) is suing amtrak and the other railroad ,on behalf of his family in Mexico.
WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN WAY

Lawsuits put spotlight on Salem rail crossings

Plaintiffs want to improve pedestrian safety

ALAN GUSTAFSON
Statesman Journal

January 10, 2006

Two lawsuits blame railroad negligence for the "wrongful" deaths of two residents hit and killed by trains in a deadly rail corridor in central Salem.

The complaints ask that the family of Elfriede Murrell be awarded $1.2 million and that the family of Fernando Bedolla-Huerta be awarded $1.3 million. Jury trials are sought by each suit.

Murrell, 62, was killed June 28, 2004, when she stepped into the path of an Amtrak train at Chemeketa Street NE.

Bedolla-Huerta, 20, died July 18, 2004, three days after he bicycled into the path of a Union Pacific freight train at Court Street NE.The lawsuits filed in Marion County place a new spotlight on a long-standing local problem. Since 1993, 30 people have been hit and killed by trains on the Union Pacific rail line, which goes through central Salem along 12th Street, close to schools, homes, government buildings and businesses.

It's the deadliest stretch of railroad track in Oregon and one of the deadliest in the country. About 30 trains -- freight and passenger -- pass through Salem every day.

Martin Murrell of Tualatin, suing Union Pacific and Amtrak because of the death of his mother, Elfriede, hopes that legal action will spur safety changes aimed at preventing more deaths.

"To me, it's not just about what happened with my mom," he said. "It's more that I feel like there's really a safety problem in Salem, and you've got a lot of victims that are going to be affected in the future if they don't do something different."

J. Randolph Pickett, a Portland lawyer representing family members in both suits, said it was unclear whether his clients were the first to bring wrongful-death suits in Salem charging the railroads with negligence.

"That's one of the things we certainly want to find out when we get involved in the discovery process of the case, to find out how does Union Pacific track these, what records do they have," he said. "A lot of that unfortunately isn't public record, or, if it is, it's hard to track down."

Lawsuits target safety

Warning signals and safety devices along the tracks provide effective safeguards for vehicles, but they fail to protect walking pedestrians or bicyclists, according to the suits.

"After the installation of flashing lights and automatic cross arms in the early 1980s, fatalities involving vehicular traffic dropped to zero," the complaints say. "However, fatalities involving pedestrians continued at one of the highest death rates for train/pedestrian incidents anywhere in the United States."

The suits allege railroad negligence, including:


Dangerous conditions in the Salem rail corridor repeatedly have been ignored by Union Pacific and Amtrak train crews.


Union Pacific, which owns the rail line, has "failed to take any reasonable steps to eliminate local safety hazards."


Union Pacific has failed to provide adequate precautionary safety measures for pedestrians, such as brightly painted areas near the tracks, warning lights and automatic gates.


Union Pacific and Amtrak have failed to order trains to go through Salem at slower speeds.

Union Pacific is named as a defendant in both suits. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The engineer and conductor of the Union Pacific train that hit Bedolla-Huerta -- "John Doe One" and "John Doe Two" -- also are named as defendants. A Union Pacific railroad track supervisor is named as "John Doe Three."

Pickett said Union Pacific would not provide the names of its employees, resulting in the "John Doe" references.

Amtrak, which operates passenger trains on the Union Pacific tracks, is named only in the suit brought by Murrell's family. Also named in that suit are George M. Landrock, identified as the engineer of the Amtrak train that hit Murrell, Craig E. Billings, identified as the conductor of the train, and "John Doe One," a Union Pacific track supervisor.

Requests for comment from Amtrak's headquarters in Washington, D.C., brought no response.

Death causes void

Elfriede Murrell was a world traveler who settled in Salem in spring 2004, only weeks before she died.

Murrell moved to Salem on the heels of a six-month vacation in Europe, a trip devoted to visiting relatives.

Her apartment was near the railroad tracks.

"She grew up in Europe, so she was used to being around trains," Martin Murrell said. "Trains didn't bother her."

Since her death, family members have struggled to comprehend what happened and why.

"We all miss her," Martin Murrell said. "It's a hard thing to go through the holidays like we just did and not have Mom with us."

No definitive explanation emerged for Murrell's death. Based on information from a witness, police surmised that she stepped into the path of a southbound passenger train because she was distracted by something.

The lawsuit suggests that Murrell's vision could have been impaired because she would have been looking into the sun. It also suggests that her ability to see the oncoming train might have been impaired by a concrete and metal barrier -- a safety fence installed near the tracks several years ago.

The Murrell lawsuit seeks damages totaling $1,204,217.

In the case of Fernando Bedolla-Huerta, a witness told police that the bicyclist apparently thought he could beat the freight train. Instead, he was sucked underneath it.

The train's engineer did not stop and continued south after the incident. He later told police that he was unaware that he had hit someone.

Bedolla-Huerta died three days later at Oregon Health & Science University hospital.

Pickett said Bedolla-Huerta's parents, who live in Mexico, are legal heirs to his estate. Miguel Bedolla of Salem, the dead man's brother, has been named personal representative of his estate, according to the lawsuit. He could not be reached for comment.The Bedolla lawsuit seeks damages totaling $1,369,463, including $64,696 for expenses arising from medical care provided Bedolla-Huerta after he was hit by the train.Safety problems persist

Salem train fatalities have been linked to varied reasons, including suicidal intent, inattention, recklessness, drug and alcohol abuse and hurrying across the tracks to "beat the train."

In 2001, the number of deaths prompted city and state officials to construct a 5-foot-high fence and 14-foot-wide walkway on the east side of the tracks. The idea was to steer people to designated crossings instead of walking across the tracks at other locations or lingering between the rails.

At the behest of U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-West Linn, Congress allocated $1.5 million to help pay for the $3 million project.

City and state officials have defended the project as a good-faith attempt to solve a vexing problem. They think it deters people, including state employees, schoolchildren and shoppers, from treating the tracks like a public walkway.

However, the lawsuits maintain that the steel-and-concrete barrier poses a "sight-obscuring obstruction," making it more difficult for pedestrians to see oncoming trains.

Martin Murrell said he thinks the project has backfired. He noted that his mother's death was one of four fatalities in 2004, all clustered in a four-week period.

"I don't think it's solving the problem if more people have died," he said.

To Murrell, it's telling that Salem has not experienced a single fatality from a train-vehicle collision in more than two decades, even as dozens of pedestrians have been hit and killed.

"I think they've done very well dealing with automobiles and how they cross," he said, "but there's nothing there to warn pedestrians -- no bells, no whistles, no anything. Those kinds of things are very common in Europe and the rest of the world."

Clearly, automatic crossing gates and flashing lights designed to safeguard drivers have been effective, Pickett said.

"They haven't had one since they installed the gates. It's been 100 percent effective," he said. "Unfortunately, those same gates and lights don't work for pedestrians. You don't see the flashing lights and the crossing gates because those are over in front of the vehicular lanes."

Train engineers often blast air horns as they rumble through Salem, providing loud warnings. However, such signals can be missed by pedestrians distracted by vehicle traffic, noise and other factors, Pickett said.

"Obviously, they're going to say you should hear the horn, but there's a problem with ambient noise in intersections like that and, for whatever reasons, people just don't focus on it," he said.

As Murrell knows, a life can be lost in sudden, horrible fashion when a person takes a few missteps onto the tracks.

"It's just a hard thing to deal with," he said of his mother's death. "Every time I cross a set of railroad tracks, I think about it."

agustafs@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6709

Clustered fatalities

Salem has not had a train-pedestrian fatality since four people died in four weeks during mid-2004. Killed during that period:

Elfriede Murrell, 62, who lived near the tracks, was hit June 28 by an Amtrak train while walking at the Chemeketa Street NE crossing.

Norma Povey, 74, who also lived near the tracks, was struck July 7 by a freight train while walking at the Market Street NE crossing.

Fernando Bedolla-Huerta, 20, of Salem was hit July 15 by a freight train as he biked across the tracks at Court Street NE.

Kyle Curtiss Hoyt, 40, of Dallas, was hit July 22 by a freight train as he crouched on a trestle just north of Union Street NE.

Costly lawsuits

Juries and courts in other states have ordered Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad company, to make multimillion-dollar payments to people severely injured in train-vehicle collisions or to the families of people killed by trains.

Among the cases:

In June 2005, a jury in Colorado ordered Union Pacific to pay more than $11 million to a 19-year-old woman who was left with irreversible brain damage when a UP train slammed into her car after it had stalled at a crossing in 2002.

Jurors found that Union Pacific knew the rail crossing was dangerous and that the train's crew should have stopped well before it reached the intersection. The train engineer had testified that the car appeared to be just off the tracks.

In October 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Union Pacific of a $30 million award of damages to an Arkansas man who was left partially paralyzed in a 1998 collision between a train and a garbage truck.

The Arkansas Supreme Court earlier affirmed the jury's verdict, finding that Union Pacific had ignored warnings about overgrown shrubbery that blocked the view of oncoming trains at the crossing where the collision occurred.

In November 2003, a Texas family who lost a child in a 2001 train-van crash agreed to a settlement negotiated during a trial in which a jury found the boy's mother mostly to blame for the accident that paralyzed her.

The woman pulled into the path of a train at a crossing; the jury assigned 72 percent of the blame to her. The jury found that Union Pacific was 23 percent liable for the crash.