
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994                   TAG: 9405080119
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                                LENGTH: Medium

WANT A HEFTY JUDGMENT? TRY PORTSMOUTH'S COURTS

Two railroad workers who claimed on-the-job injuries have won separate jury awards of $1 million or more this year, enhancing this Virginia port city's reputation as a good place to sue rail carriers.

"It's the makeup of the city," said Willard Moody Sr., a former legislator who handles numerous suits against railroads. "You have a lot of working-class people, a lot of blue-collar people. They can understand the problems of working-class people."

Three years ago, the General Assembly tried to close the door on what had become a massive caseload of railroad suits in Portsmouth Circuit Court.

At the time, state law allowed suits to be filed anywhere a defendant did business, even if the cause of the claim happened somewhere else - including out of state. Since Portsmouth has railroad tracks, almost any case against a railroad could be filed here.

Accordingly, scores of claims poured into the city - nearly 500 alone against CSX Transportation in 1991, the year the law was changed.

Since then, the number of railroad cases has dropped to about 150 a year, but many out-of-state claims are still working their way through the court.

Last week, a jury awarded $1.8 million to a brakeman who suffered a hearing loss when an engineer blew a whistle near where he was standing in Huntington, W.Va. The case had been filed in 1988.

"This was an outrageous miscarriage of justice," said Daniel Warman, the railroad's attorney. He said he asked the judge to set aside the award.

The plaintiff's Buffalo, N.Y. attorneys, John Collins and Michael Doran, said they brought the suit in Portsmouth because local juries don't get swayed by railroads and railroad doctors.

"Juries seem not to be afraid to compensate people for their injuries," said Stan Clark, an attorney who won a $1 million judgment in January for a brakeman who required back surgery after a 1989 accident in Indiana.

In the case last week, Gina Coffield, the forewoman of the seven-member civil jury, said the panel figured $800,000 in damages and $1 million for pain and suffering.

The latter "was a hard thing to put a price on," said Coffield, a 36-year-old pharmacy manager. "We knew the lawyers were going to get a nice cut out of this deal."

The decision took less than two hours of deliberations. "I wish there had been some kind of guidelines," Coffield said.

by CNB