Chavez & Gertler LLP Announces Burlington Northern Hit with $9 Million Verdict in Railroad Accident Case.

MARTINEZ, Calif. -- A Contra Costa county jury has awarded a former utility worker $9 million, including $2 million in punitive damages, for a 2001 accident at an unguarded railroad crossing in Pinole, California. In awarding punitive damages, the jury found that Burlington Northern Railroad acted with conscious disregard for the safety of others.

Although Burlington Northern acknowledged in the fall of 2001 that the Pinole crossing posed an unnecessary risk, it failed to close it. The event recorder of the train involved also showed that the engineer failed to sound the train's horn, despite a rule requiring train engineers to do so.

Pietrowski, 40, was a PG&E employee working on power lines which ran near a private train crossing on the border of Pinole and Hercules on December 19, 2001. As he drove over the tracks, where neither gates nor lights warned passing vehicles, a train struck his company truck and sent it flying into the air. Pietrowski suffered severe brain and spinal injuries. He is unable to ever work again.

The jury awarded Robert Pietrowski $6.9 million in damages for pain and economic loss and $2 million in punitive damages.

Mr. Pietrowski's attorney, Jonathan Gertler of Chavez & Gertler, said that he hoped the verdict would prompt BNSF to improve the safety of its crossings.

Mr. Gertler stated that one of the key pieces of evidence in the trial was the testimony of a railroad safety official that said that when a train hits a motorist, the company considers the motorist 100 percent at fault in every case. The Burlington Northern official also testified that gates and lights do not make a crossing safer.

Burlington Northern should have closed the crossing because it was unsafe, Gertler stated. The railroad acknowledged the planned closing in a late-October letter to the owner of the property where the railroad crossing was located. The letter stated the crossing would be closed in 30 days, Gertler said. The train struck Pietrowski's truck 50 days after the date of the letter.