Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 30, 1993 TAG: 9303300097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE and LON WAGNER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Lawyers have argued that the memo shows the railroad was more concerned about money than protecting the lives of people who walk across its trestles.
The woman, identified as Patricia Nixon, was fired in late February. Her firing was the culmination of a three-month investigation by the railroad to determine who leaked internal information.
Nixon could not be reached for comment Monday. But a woman who called the Roanoke Times & World-News earlier and identified herself as the fired employee said, "My whole life is ruined because I tried to do the right thing."
The woman, who worked in the company's bridge and structures office in Atlanta, said she stumbled across the controversial memo several years ago while looking through files in her department.
She said she was so appalled by the railway's attitude that she photocopied the memo and mailed it anonymously to the mother of a child who was struck four years ago by a Norfolk Southern train on a trestle near Farmville.
The memo helped that woman obtain an out-of-court settlement with Norfolk Southern.
But the memo wasn't made public until October, when it was included as an exhibit in a $10 million lawsuit filed as a result of the Aug. 16 deaths of two Henry County teen-agers. The teen-agers - Charles Barker, 13, and Earl Adams, 14 - were killed crossing a 431-foot Norfolk Southern trestle while taking a shortcut into Martinsville.
The railway immediately asked the court to seal the file, to avoid disclosure of the memo. Following a January hearing, a Henry County judge refused to remove the memo from the case.
Wiley F. Mitchell Jr., the railroad's chief attorney who wrote the 1989 memo, said Nixon was justifiably fired.
"The people at Norfolk Southern were concerned that confidential files were removed and disseminated to people with the obvious intent that they be used against the company," Mitchell said.
William Poff, another Norfolk Southern attorney, said the company doesn't consider Nixon to be a well-intentioned whistleblower trying to protect the public. Mitchell said the memo involved internal debate over the pros and cons of trestle safety, and was not a matter of policy or law.
She was a disloyal worker, Poff said. "No employer is going to tolerate that."
David Steele, general chairman of the Transportation Communications Union, said Nixon has admitted no wrongdoing; the union's position is that she is innocent. The union is pursuing an appeal.
Steele and Les Gilbert, who handled Nixon's grievance hearing, accuse the railway of illegally searching Nixon's personal items in her desk.
Nixon's union representatives said the case against her is purely circumstantial and the company has no concrete evidence that she copied the document.
Railway detectives began the investigation in October, and apparently traced the leak to Nixon through a process of elimination. The railway had information that the person who leaked the memo was a woman; Nixon was one of only a few women who had access to the document. The woman who called this newspaper said the company used her 1989 phone records to tie her to the woman in Farmville.
The woman, who has worked for Norfolk Southern since 1979, said she had no previous bad marks on her record.
"They made my life a living hell," she said of the investigation. "They got a policeman to escort me off the property."
She said she sent the memo "out of the goodness of my heart."
She said she doesn't know what she is going to do now that she has been fired. She has three children and was negotiating to buy a house.
"I'm just sick," she said. "Right now, my life has completely stopped."
The Sept. 8, 1989, memo was written by Mitchell in response to railway officials' concerns about whether warning devices should be put on certain trestles.
In the memo, Mitchell wrote that such devices "should reduce the risk of accidents." But, Mitchell added, the railway could be subject to a greater risk of liability if the devices weren't used or didn't work in the case of an accident.
The railroad, which has 7,750 bridges in its system, has consistently fought efforts to install warning systems at trestles. A U.S. Department of Transportation study found that across the country 40 children are killed or injured each year on train trestles.
Norfolk Southern maintains that people who walk on its bridges and trestles are at fault for trespassing. In November a Norfolk Southern spokesman said, "Why should we pay any money to warn people not to trespass on our property?"
Meanwhile, both the Henry County and the Farmville accidents were cited in a $10 million lawsuit filed last week in Roanoke.
That case involves the March 1991 death of Donald Lee Jones, who was killed by a Norfolk Southern train when he walked out on a trestle over Tinker Creek.
A law that would allow localities to require trains to sound their whistles at bridges and trestles was passed by the General Assembly this year. It is expected to go into effect July 1.
by CNB