(The following story by Rick Brundrett appeared on The State?s website on November 1.)
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A jury has awarded $12 million to the estate of a Swansea town employee killed in 2001 when a CSX track maintenance machine hit his truck at a town railroad crossing.
The mother of Gregory Stanley Williams, Eartha Mae Williams, was awarded $4.5 million in actual damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages.
Gregory Williams, 44, a long-time water department worker, died Jan. 3, 2001, when his town truck was hit and dragged by a 35,000-pound railroad machine at the 5th Street crossing.
CSX Transportation Inc. was negligent because it had not followed state law and cleared overgrown scrub oaks and other vegetation at the crossing, said the family’s lawyer, Johnny Parker of Hampton. The vegetation blocked Williams’ view, Parker said.
CSX spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said Friday that the railroad company will ask the trial judge to reverse the verdict. If she doesn’t, the company will consider appealing, he said.
Although the accident was in Lexington County, the lawsuit was filed in Orangeburg County. The jury trial before Judge Diane Goodstein started Oct. 13 and finished Thursday.
Since the mid-1990s, the state Transportation Department has fined the Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad for not clearing vegetation at 137 crossings statewide, Parker said. The railroad owes the state about $300,000 in fines, he said.
“If these railroads don’t clean up these crossings, we’re going to have more deaths or serious injuries,” Parker said Friday. “If you can’t see the train, you can’t avoid the train.”
Hollingsworth acknowledged CSX has been fined by the state, but said a transportation lawyer testified at the trial that the state did not plan to collect the fines because the issues “have all been resolved.”
Since the summer of 2001, CSX has had a “very aggressive vegetation control program” in the 23 states in which it operates, Hollingsworth said.
That program was not started because of Williams’ death, he said. “We instituted it because it’s the right thing to do … to ensure adequate sight distance at all passive crossings.”
Passive crossings, such as the one at 5th Street just west of the downtown commercial area, do not have gates or lights.
Swansea Mayor Ray Spires said Friday that no safety changes have been made at the crossing since Williams’ crash, but he said there have been no other accidents.
“A lot of people have asked for railroad crossing (warning signals) at that area,” he said. “They want something done to make it safer out there.”
Hollingsworth said Williams’ death was tragic. “We’ll never know why he stopped at the stop sign and then proceeded.”
The maintenance vehicle’s driver, Ronald Paul Bowen II of Dillon, told investigators he blew the horn and slowed when Williams drove onto the tracks.
The bright orange machine is 12 feet high, 10 feet wide and 25 feet long, equipped with a flashing strobe light, headlights and a horn, Hollingsworth said.
The machine, which deposits and compresses rocks along the tracks, was traveling about 20 mph when it crashed into Williams’ truck, Parker said. CSX?s self-imposed speed limit for that machine at a crossing is 5 mph, the lawyer said.
Hollingsworth said a plaintiff?s expert testified at the trial that Williams had at least 200 feet of visibility.
Williams, who was not married and had no children, had run Swansea?s water system since 1983.
He was a “super nice guy, very quiet, and he always smiled at you,” Spires said. “He never said a harsh word about anybody.”
The town has a plaque in his memory on the wall of the water office.
After the crash, residents called on CSX to make the crossing safer. A company spokesman at the time said that was up to the state Transportation Department.
Resident Darlene Pilotsaid the town? leaders need to be more aggressive about improvements.
“I have to cross it to go to the doctor?s office and I’m terrified of it. But we have no choice.”
But the mayor is not expecting any changes soon at the crossing.
“It’s way down at the bottom” of the Transportation Department?s list for upgrades, Spires said.