Episode 3 of Corboy & Demetrio's Podcast, The Masters of Trial Law, examines Liability in Truck Crashes and Train Derailments
Co-hosted by Corboy & Demetrio Managing Partner Ken Lumb and Partner Bill Gibbs, Episode 3 of The Masters of Trial Law video podcast explores liability in truck and train crashes. The new episode, Finding Fault in Truck and Train Crashes, delves into Corboy & Demetrio's significant cases involving truck accidents and train derailments, exploring their causes, legal complexities, and the firm's experience successfully representing victims and their families in lawsuits.
Partners Philip “Flip” Corboy and Conrad Nowak join Bill and Ken as panelists.
In the episode, the panel examines leading causes of train derailments, including human error, track-related issues, mechanical failures, speeding, and poor weather. Philip Corboy, Jr., in his nearly four decades with the personal injury law firm, discusses a high-profile lawsuit stemming from the Rockford, Illinois derailment of 18 train cars that were filled with ethanol. The derailment led to a fireball explosion of the derailed cars, killing a mother who was trying to flee to safety.
Philip discusses concept of "washout" as a known risk in the railroad industry and the role it played in the Rockford derailment, which was caused by heavy rain washing out the ballast under the tracks. Corboy & Demetrio obtained a $22 million settlement for the estate of the mother who died.
Philip explained to the panel that the defense lawyer and some of the people involved in the lawsuit said they had never heard of “washout” before. “We had some experts that talked about not only is it a very common term, everybody in the railroad industry knows about it, and if you have train tracks that have been washed out or if the support system underneath the tracks has been washed out, you can’t use those tracks,” Philip added.
Co-host Bill Gibbs discusses a catastrophic train derailment in Chicago of a commuter Metra train in 2005. Bill and Corboy & Demetrio Co-founder Thomas Demetrio represented a woman who suffered brain injury but survived the crash. Bill and Tom obtained a record-setting $29.6 million Cook Co. jury verdict on the passenger’s behalf.
The hosts and panelists also dissect trucking litigation in the episode, delving into the leading causes of truck crashes, which include driver fatigue and distraction, the issue of inadequate insurance coverage, and the role of brokers and shippers in trucking operations. The importance of early investigation, preservation of evidence, and the use of technology, including data recorders and GPS, in building cases was one focus of the discussion.
Conrad Nowak, with 18 years of experience in defending transportation companies in negligence lawsuits, explains the critical importance for victims to hire a lawyer as soon as possible after a truck crash in order to level the legal playing field.
"If it's a larger company, they have their lawyers out there. They have their investigators out there. They are talking to witnesses, they are taking statements, and if it's a smaller company with any reasonable insurance company, that insurance company is doing all of those things and essentially already beginning to build a case against the victim," Conrad told the panel.
Ken Lumb discusses how the trucking industry’s structuring creates a multi-tiered system with brokers and shippers that can complicate the determination of liability. “It's really kind of two tiered. You’ve got arguments over who's to blame in terms of the negligence, the causes of the collision, but also who's legally responsible for that negligence, for the injures that are caused,” Ken told the panel.
Finally, the podcast highlights the role of transportation lawsuits in driving industry change, including the adoption of positive train control technology by railroads to prevent speed-related derailments.
“In our Metra derailment, we talked about something called positive train control. It’s technology that would prevent a train from going too fast through a 10-mph zone. And at the time, Metra just didn’t have positive train control technologies in play,” Bill Gibbs said.
"One of the byproducts of a lawsuit was that, hopefully, we make the world a little bit safer and certainly Metra enacting positive train control after our derailment helped make things safer,” he added.
Watch the full episode, here, on Corboy & Demetrio's YouTube channel