BATON ROUGE, La. (Legal Newsline) – Union Pacific says it is not to blame for the death of a man who was struck by a train in Louisiana while trying to get his dog off the tracks.
The railroad company on Feb. 1 filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit of Ulysses and Tina Douglas, who are seeking wrongful death damages from the death of their brother Harold.
Harold was hunting in White Castle when his dog wandered onto tracks used by Union Pacific. As Douglas tried to save the dog, he was hit by a train. The lawsuit alleged a failure to keep a proper lookout and failures to stop and appropriately signal and didn't mention whether the dog survived.
“There is no factual or legal basis upon which Union Pacific owed a duty to prevent or avoid the risk of injury and/or death to Mr. Douglas,” says the motion, filed in Baton Rouge federal court.
“Mr. Douglas made the tragic decision to place himself on the track in the path of an oncoming train… Mr. Douglas was a trespasser on the railroad tracks. It is well-established in Louisiana that pedestrians do not have a right to be on a railway’s ‘right-of-way, which is essentially private property.’”
The motion cites previous Louisiana rulings going back as far as 1940 to argue it owed no duty to Harold because Harold did not have the company’s permission to be on its tracks.
“The Petition does not contain any allegations that anyone operating the train was aware of Mr. Douglas’s position on the railroad tracks at any time before the accident,” the motion says. “To the contrary, the Petition’s few factual allegations establish that Mr. Douglas stepped onto the train tracks in order to save his dog from the danger that could logically only be posed by a train threatening imminent impact.”
The lawsuit seeks damages for Harold’s pain and suffering, funeral expenses, grief, anguish and loss of companionship. The Douglases are represented by Willis & Buckley, Gambel & Tompkins and Roy Amedee, all of New Orleans.
Union Pacific is represented by Hillary Brouillette and other lawyers at Irwin Fritchie Urquhart & Moore.