ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 4, 1996 TAG: 9606040061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke jury has awarded $1.3 million to a former railroad employee who injured his hand in a sledge hammer accident.
The Saturday night verdict - which came after five days of testimony last week in Roanoke Circuit Court - was the latest in a number of large verdicts against Norfolk Southern Corp. for on-the-job injuries.
Although railroad lawyers have complained about what they call excessive verdicts, the case actually ended a more recent string of cases in which Roanoke juries determined that Norfolk Southern was not to blame for four workplace accidents.
Still, a lawyer for the firm that represented the railroad called Saturday's verdict "ridiculous and outrageous."
William Poff said David L. O'Neal's injury caused him to lose only 30 percent of the use of his right hand at the most, and that O'Neal turned down the railroad's job offer as a typist after the accident.
"It's just hard to imagine why any jury would give away money in this fashion," Poff said. "It's just like it was paper money or Monopoly money."
O'Neal, a junior student mechanic who worked at the railroad's East End shops in Roanoke, was injured in June 1989 while rebuilding a boxcar, according to Mark Cathey, a Vinton attorney who represented him along with Richard Cranwell.
The accident happened when a supervisor was removing a coupler key from a coupler, the device that links cars, by using a sledge hammer to strike a bar held against the key. O'Neal, who was standing on the other side of the boxcar, reached for the key after being told that it was free from the coupler.
At that point, the supervisor struck the key again with the sledge hammer, causing the 30- to 40-pound device to strike O'Neal's hand.
It took three operations to repair a damaged tendon in O'Neal's middle finger. O'Neal, 29, testified that he attempted to return to work, but had to quit after re-injuring his hand in 1991.
A vocational expert testified that O'Neal is unable to perform 92 percent of the jobs in the current labor market. The railroad, however, had argued that there were more job opportunities for O'Neal than he had suggested.
Railroad lawyers had also told the jury that O'Neal's own negligence might have contributed to the accident.
Cranwell, however, argued that the railroad violated several safety rules on the day of the accident, including having workers standing in the wrong positions for the job they were performing and having an extra employee for what should have been a two-man job.
The lawsuit was filed under the Federal Employer's Liability Act, which has been used to bring hundreds of cases against Norfolk Southern in Roanoke.
In recent years, Roanoke juries have returned several multimillion dollar verdicts for railroad workers injured on the job, including $4.7 million to a brakeman who hurt his back repairing a signal box and $2.6 million to an employee who said the noise of trains drove him insane.
The $4.7 million verdict - believed to be the largest in Roanoke history - was later reversed by the Virginia Supreme Court.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB