BATON ROUGE, La. (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge has refused to hold Union Pacific liable for the death of a man who was struck by a train in Louisiana while trying to get his dog off railroad tracks.
Judge John deGravelles on Sept. 27 granted the company's motion to dismiss, allowing plaintiffs suing over the death of Harold Douglas to amend their case within 28 days. The judge noted Union Pacific could have legally owed Douglas a duty to protect him, even though he was a trespasser on its property.
"However, in their opposition brief, Plaintiffs fail to point the court to any factual allegation in the petition regarding how long Douglas had been on the track at the time he was struck; whether it was night, day, dusk or dawn; whether Douglas was seen or could have been seen by the engineer before the accident and, if so, at what distance; whether the engineer sounded his horn prior to the collision and, if so, for what period of time before the collision; (and) whether the engineer attempted to brake and, if so, when?"
Plaintiffs Ulysses and Tina Douglas are seeking wrongful death damages over the death of their brother Harold, who was hunting in White Castle when his dog wanderd 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.
“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," the company's motion to dismiss said.
"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 cited 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.