(The Courier-Journal published the following story by Gregory A. Hall on its website on September 11.)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Jefferson Circuit Court jury awarded $2.74million to a CSX Transportation employee yesterday, finding the railroad company negligent in allowing him to be exposed to toxic solvents that led to brain damage.
Troy Moody worked in what was the Louisville & Nashville Railroad’s south Louisville shops, where locomotives were cleaned with solvents, for about four years beginning in 1978, according to court records and his wife, Janet Moody.
Moody, 51, and his attorney, Joseph Satterley, argued that CSX exposed Moody and other employees to toxic solvents, even though they knew that the chemicals could cause brain damage.
In his closing argument, Edward Stopher, an attorney for CSX, said that Moody’s brain damage wasn’t caused by exposure to the solvents and denied that CSX failed to protect its workers from any known hazard.
He cited testimony by a co-worker of Moody’s, who said that Moody began acting forgetful only around the time he filed the lawsuit. Stopher also contended that if solvents had caused the brain damage, the effects would have been immediate.
Jurors voted 9-3 that negligence by CSX ? not Moody ? was a cause of the brain damage.
The jury awarded Moody $200,000 for future medical expenses, $540,000 for future lost wages, and $2million for past and future pain and suffering.
“The company was wrong,” jury foreman Doug Hatfield said in an interview. “They put him in an unsafe environment.”
The railroad knew the potential effects of exposure to the solvents since the early 1960s, Hatfield said, and could have provided respiratory masks to all employees, but didn’t.
“They sure were capable of making it safer than they did,” he said.
The jury “did the right thing,” Troy Moody said in a brief interview after the verdict was read.
Satterley said jurors “saw through” CSX’s attempts to blame his client.
Just before the start of the trial, which lasted about two weeks, CSX offered to settle the case for $75,000 on the condition that Moody not return to work, Satterley said. Moody is off work now because of unrelated injuries.
The offer “was offensive to Mr. Moody,” Satterley said.
Company officials do not discuss settlement negotiations, CSX spokesman David Hall said.
“We are disappointed with the verdict and are reviewing and assessing our options and next steps,” he said.
Satterley contended in an interview after the verdict that CSX does not take solvent cases seriously.
A 10-month investigation by The Courier-Journal, published in May 2001, found that CSX Transportation had paid nearly $35million in settlements or awards to more than 460 railroad workers who filed claims or lawsuits. Doctors had diagnosed brain damage in the workers ? from Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland and elsewhere ? caused by occupational exposure to solvents.
In its series, the newspaper reported how, despite medical warnings, the railroad industry in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s allowed heavy and largely unprotected use of toxic chlorinated-hydrocarbon solvents at shops from Maryland to Montana.
Moody’s case was the first in at least five years to reach trial in Jefferson County, Satterley said.
Moody’s wife told a reporter afterward that the brain damage has caused short-term memory loss. “It’s changed his moods. It’s affected his health,” she said.
Janet Moody described their marriage as happy but said the effects of the exposure, which she said she began noticing in the early 1980s, made it more difficult.
Moody has been diagnosed with toxic encephalopathy, according to pleadings in the case. That form of brain damage is characterized by short-term memory loss, depression, anxiety and diminished mental function.
Toward the end of their three-hour deliberations, jurors sent out three questions. One asked what percentage Moody’s attorney would get from an award and another asked whether the verdict could be appealed.
Judge Tom McDonald told jurors they could consider only the evidence they had seen during the trial.
The third question dealt with how the verdict forms were to be signed.
The jury could have awarded up to $5.5million in damages.