(The following article by Jason Riley was posted on the Louisville Courier-Journal website on November 14.)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former employee sued CSX Transportation on Wednesday for exposing him to toxic solvents, the latest of about two dozen lawsuits against the railroad company since a $2.7million jury verdict two months ago.
Michael McMahon, who is representing former employee Robert Fleming in the lawsuit filed this week in Jefferson Circuit Court, said he has about a dozen more clients being diagnosed for possible brain damage in preparation for new lawsuits. The employees worked in what was the Louisville & Nashville Railroad’s south Louisville shops, where locomotives were cleaned with solvents.
The plaintiff’s attorney in the September verdict, Joe Satterley, said he has an additional half-dozen lawsuits expected to be filed in the coming weeks against CSX.
“They have to wake up and realize they caused a lot of people to have brain damage, and they will have to compensate these people or face a jury,” Satterley said.
Both McMahon and Satterley, along with other lawyers, have lawsuits still pending against CSX, with trials scheduled for next year. More than 30 lawsuits have been filed against CSX this year, according to court records. “The snowball’s been rolling down the hill and out of sight,” McMahon said.
CSX Transportation spokesman David Hall said that he hadn’t seen the recent lawsuits and couldn’t comment on them specifically, but he maintained that the railroad is not responsible for the symptoms that Fleming and others say that they have suffered.
“We sympathize with the people who say they have these symptoms, but the scientific evidence clearly shows that the symptoms are not caused by the use of solvents at our predecessor facilities.”
In the most recent lawsuit, Fleming, who worked for CSX from 1981 to 1989, claims he was regularly overexposed to toxic solvents, chemicals and fumes, which led to permanent brain damage.
Fleming, according to the lawsuit, has been diagnosed in the last three years with chronic toxic encephalopathy, a form of brain damage characterized by short-term memory loss, depression, anxiety and diminished mental function.
The lawsuit says that the railroad knew or should have known of the dangerous effects of the solvents and warned Fleming. It requests an undetermined amount of money for damages, medical care and lost wages.
McMahon has not asked that his lawsuits be certified as a class action because each victim is affected differently, he said. He said many of the lawsuits came about in part because of an investigation by The Courier-Journal, published in May 2001. That investigation found CSX had paid nearly $35million in settlements or awards to more than 460 railroad workers who filed claims or lawsuits. Doctors 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 largely unprotected use of toxic chlorinated-hydrocarbon solvents.
Satterley said, “We’re seeing a lot of people get brain damage because (CSX) didn’t care enough to protect them from these solvents.”