THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280412
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a personal injury award against a Norfolk Southern Corp. subsidiary.
The decision narrows the scope of a federal law designed to protect railroad workers from being hurt by the equipment used to couple and uncouple railroad cars. The decision was unanimous.
Federal and state courts all over the country have long been split on the interpretation of the law.
``We are glad the court stepped in to resolve what has been a longstanding issue among courts,'' said Bob Fort, a Norfolk Southern spokesman.
The case involved William J. Hiles, a brakeman for the Norfolk & Western Railway Co., who hurt his back in a 1990 accident at a rail yard in St. Louis.
Hiles sued the railroad in Madison County, Ill., and was awarded $492,500 when a state judge and jury concluded therailroad had violated the Safety Appliance Act.
The act requires railroad cars be equipped with couplers that link automatically at impact and don't require workers to go between the cars to release them.
Hiles injured his back while trying to straighten a drawbar connected to the coupling mechanism that had become misaligned.
The Norfolk-based railroad company lost two appeals in the state courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court said the state courts were wrong.
The evidence shows that the drawbars sometimes misalign in the course of normal movement and there is no mechanism to prevent it.
The Safety Appliance Act ``is not breached . . . when a drawbar becomes misaligned during the ordinary course of railroad operations,'' Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.
Such misalignment is common, Thomas said. ``We are understandably hesitant to adopt a reading . . . that would suggest that almost every railroad car in service for nearly a century has been in violation of the'' act, he wrote. MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
by CNB