Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog

Last week, a train crash in Los Angeles killed at least 25 and injured dozens more. The train crash happened when a full commuter train disregarded a railroad signal and crashed head-on with a freight train.

The engineer of the commuter train was killed in the crash, so it will never be known exactly why he disregarded the signal. However, there were reports that he was engaged in text-messaging shortly before the train crash happened. If those reports prove to be true, the being distracted by text messaging while driving the train could be the root cause of the train crash.

Passenger train operators like the one involved here are considered to be common carriers. This means that they have a legal obligation to exercise the highest degree of care to assure the safety of the train passengers. This is also true of local rail lines such as the CTA or Metra.

Because the railroad owes the highest degree of care to assure the safety of its passengers, it will not matter from a liability perspective why the crash occurred. This engineer disregarded the signal, and this makes the railroad responsible for the many wrongful death claims and serious injuries that resulted from this train crash.

Labels: train accidents, wrongful death