SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — A federal judge has rejected a wrongful death suit by the widow of a deputy volunteer fire chief against a railroad, the Hampshire Gazette reported.
Virginia Murphy claimed in her suit that Conrail’s negligence in starting an April 1999 forest fire in Russell resulted in her husband’s death from a heart attack.
John Murphy, a 30-year-veteran of the Russell Fire Department, collapsed and died as he led a group of firefighters up the Tekoa Mountain on the first day of the blaze. He was 63.
“The record lacks even a scintilla of evidence connecting Mr. Murphy’s death to the fire,” U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor said in granting the railroad’s motion for a summary judgment.
“Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that he died of natural causes, and the time and place of his death had no more than a coincidental connection with the fire,” Ponsor said in his Sept. 25 ruling.
State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan found that freight railroad work crews touched off the two-day blaze that blackened 1,200 acres in Montgomery and Russell before it was brought under control by 200 firefighters from nearly three dozen communities and National Guard helicopters from Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Virginia Murphy declined to comment Wednesday on Ponsor’s ruling, the Union-News in Springfield reported.
Following the fire, CSX Transportation, Conrail’s successor, agreed to seek permission from local fire chiefs before doing track work when the fire danger is high.