(The Associated Press circulated the following story on Juy 12.)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A jury ruled in favor of CSX Transportation Inc. in a lawsuit brought by a former employee who claimed he suffered brain disease from exposure to toxic chemicals used by the railroad.
David Ray Burton, 48, alleged he developed chronic toxic encephalopathy from exposure to harmful solvents used in the railroad’s Louisville yard. Chronic toxic encephalopathy is a debilitating illness characterized by short-term memory loss, depression, anxiety and diminished mental function.
Burton filed suit in September 2000, claiming his injuries resulted from CSX’s negligent failure to provide a safe working environment.
The Jefferson Circuit jury found that CSX provided Burton a reasonably safe place to work and that the chemicals and solvents did not cause his injuries. The jury returned a 10-2 verdict on Friday dismissing Burton’s claims and ending a three-week trial.
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 with the Courier-Journal.
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 doctors estimated 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.
CSX, the largest railroad in the eastern United States, had acknowledged paying up to $35 million to 466 current or former workers in confidential solvent settlements or jury verdicts, the newspaper reported.
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 $2.74 million 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.