(The following story by Andrew Wolfson appeared on The Courier-Journal website on July 13.)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Jefferson Circuit Court jury has rejected the claims of a former CSX Transportation Inc. worker who said he suffered brain disease from his exposure to toxic chemicals used by the railroad.
After a three-week trial, the jury returned a 10-2 verdict Friday for CSX.
David Ray Burton, 48, began working for CSX in 1978 as a general laborer at its Louisville yard. He claimed that his continuous exposure to solvents used to clean locomotives caused him to suffer from an occupational disease known as chronic toxic encephalopathy, a debilitating illness characterized by short-term memory loss, depression, anxiety and diminished mental function.
Burton, who lives in Crestwood, filed suit in September 2000, claiming his injuries resulted from CSX’s negligent failure to provide a safe working environment. But the jury found that CSX provided Burton a reasonably safe place to work and that the chemicals and solvents did not cause his injuries.
Burton was diagnosed in 1995 with multiple sclerosis, one of the most common diseases of the central nervous system. Other doctors later contended that diagnosis was wrong and that he really suffered from the illness caused by exposure to solvents.
CSX claimed that Burton’s condition, including tremors, spasms and depression, was best explained by the original diagnosis and that multiple sclerosis isn’t caused by exposure to solvents, CSX’s lawyer, Edward Stopher, said in an interview.
Burton’s attorney, Ken Sales, said he probably will file an appeal.
“It was a very difficult case, and the jury had trouble separating the two illnesses,” he said.
The Courier-Journal reported in a May 2001 series that decades of unsafe handling of the chemical solvents used to clean locomotives was being blamed for poisoning hundreds — perhaps thousands — of railroad workers across the country. The newspaper reported that, according to doctors, more than 600 railroaders had developed mild to severe brain damage in the previous 15 years from their heavy and long-term exposure to common degreasing solvents.
The railroad companies, which collectively have paid tens of millions of dollars to settle solvent lawsuits, have denied any link between workers’ solvent exposure and brain damage, according to the series. It reported that CSX, the largest railroad in the eastern United States, had acknowledged paying up to $35million to 466 current or former workers in confidential solvent settlements or jury verdicts. The company said it settled the suits mainly out of business considerations.
CSX has won three of the four cases tried before juries in Kentucky, Stopher said.
The exception came last September, when a Jefferson Circuit Court jury awarded $2.74million to CSX employee Troy Moody, finding the railroad company negligent in allowing him to be exposed to toxic solvents that led to brain damage. Moody worked in what was then called 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.
Stopher said the facts and circumstances of the Burton and Moody cases were the same.