ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, November 23, 1996            TAG: 9611250009
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-1  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER

NORFOLK SOUTHERN'S SURVEILLANCE DOESN'T HELP IT WIN INJURY CASE

When Timothy Hayslett said he suffered a career-ending injury while working for Norfolk Southern Corp., the railroad didn't just take his word for it.

After Hayslett claimed in a $1.5 million lawsuit that his injury was the result of unsafe working conditions, the railroad put one of its detectives on his trail.

From a hiding spot across Brambleton Avenue, the detective used a video camera to capture Hayslett - who said he could not work at any job because of pain from a back injury - working on and off at a Roanoke garage.

But after watching the videotape during a three-day trial in Roanoke Circuit Court, a jury on Thursday night still decided to award Hayslett $441,000.

James Johnson, a Roanoke lawyer who represented the railroad, admitted that the videotape didn't show "anything as dramatic as a handstand or a backflip."

But after watching Hayslett perform a number of jobs at the garage, Johnson told the jury, "you will be able to make up your own minds about the legitimacy of his complaint that he can't work at anything."

The videotape shows Hayslett, 29, bending and squatting to replace a tail light on his truck, using power tools, sweeping the area in front of the garage and washing the windshield of a car.

"Surely he can work at something," Johnson said. "He should not be permitted to just write himself off."

But Hayslett testified that he was not working as an employee of the garage, and that he could not have done the activity captured on the videotape full time. The garage was owned by a friend, he said, and doing odd jobs there was a way to relieve his boredom while recovering from two back surgeries.

"There's no proof that he can do heavy work or lifting for an extended period of time," said Hayslett's attorney, Randy Appleton.

Hayslett, who is from Eagle Rock, testified that he ruptured a disc in his back three years ago while building hopper cars in the railroad's shops. The injury happened when Hayslett was trying to guide an 884-pound metal beam down an incline, onto a work table.

Bob Auman, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, declined to say how often and in what types of cases the railroad uses surveillance to investigate employees who have filed lawsuits against it.

"Surveillance is nothing new in investigating claims and crimes against the rail industry" - or any other industry, Auman said.

"The primary purpose is to verify that a person does in fact have an injury or a disability that he claims to have."

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