ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEMO: shorter in Metro edition.
Lawyers wrangled Tuesday in Roanoke over how to manage lawsuits filed by nearly 100 railroad workers from four states who claim they contracted lung disease from exposure to rock dust and coal dust.
The track maintenance workers want the cases kept in U.S. District Judge James Turk's court, while CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Corp. want some of them transferred to the states where the workers live.
Turk, who said he would rule later on the transfer issue, has rejected an effort to join the cases as a class-action lawsuit.
All of the workers who filed the suits claim they have been diagnosed with silicosis caused by exposure to hazardous dusts, and each seeks $2 million in damages.
Nearly half of them are employed by the railroad companies and the others are retired, Portsmouth attorney Willard Moody said.
The workers from Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee began filing the lawsuits in May 1995 after a physician diagnosed one of them with lung disease. Moody told Turk the doctor reported the case to the Virginia Department of Health, which in turn contacted the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
OSHA investigated the railroads to determine if dust made the workplace hazardous, Moody said, adding: ``The monitoring showed that in certain instances workers were being overexposed. As a result, a lot of workers went to get checked to see if they had that problem.''
Most of the employees worked with the chunks of rock that underlay tracks, either on machines that break up the rock or beside trucks that dumped piles of the rock along the rail beds during track construction and maintenance, Moody said.
The lawsuits claim the employees were unaware of the danger of the dusts and the railroad companies were negligent in not protecting them.
They allege that their life expectancies have been shortened and they have increased risk of cancer and other conditions, such as tuberculosis, because of their lung disease.
The railroad companies deny any negligence and deny that the workers were exposed to hazardous conditions. Trial dates have not been scheduled.
Elizabeth Niles, an attorney representing Norfolk Southern, said 13 of the cases belong closer to the residences of the workers and their physicians and co-workers who would be asked to testify.
But Moody argued that it's more logical to try the cases in one place, either in Big Stone Gap or Abingdon. That way, he said, rulings would be consistent, and it would be easier to resolve all of the cases after the first few are decided.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB