LANSING, Mich. (Legal Newsline) - A railroad company is possibly headed toward trial after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled it was not entitled to judgment in the case of a boy who was struck by a train he didn't hear coming because he was listening to music through earbuds.
Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company was awarded summary disposition in the case, brought by the estate of Jacob Marion. He was 14 years old when he was hit by a train and later died.
Conductor Steven Golombeski and engineer Jessie Wilson both saw Marion walking on the tracks from about three-quarters of a mile away and presumed he would get out of the way eventually.
"The kid doesn't look like he's going to move," Golombeski said.
The horn sounded when the train was 18 seconds away, but Marion never heard it. The emergency brake wasn't pulled until the last second, and that stopped the rain after 720 feet.
"Plaintiff suffered severe injuries as a result of the collision," Justice Elizabeth Clement wrote. "His phone and earbuds were later found near the site of the accident, still playing music."
Though the trial judge agreed with Grand Trunk Western that the accident was caused by Marion's failure to exercise ordinary care for his own safety, the Supreme Court says questions about that remain, and the case will proceed toward trial.
It affirmed a Court of Appeals reversal that said a train engineer has a duty to stop or slow down when a person fails to respond to a warning signal.
Though Marion was a trespasser on Grand Trunk Western's property, that doesn't mean it did not owe him a duty, the high court ruled. Train operators have a duty to run their trains with reasonable care and watchfulness.
If an operator has no reason to believe a person would not move off the tracks, he or she can presume the person will move and has no duty to take steps to avoid a collision. But when it becomes apparent the person won't move, the operator must respond, the court said.
"There remain genuine issues of material fact that preclude summary disposition at this point," Clement wrote.
"A reasonable juror could conclude that defendants were negligent in sounding a second horn rather than applying the emergency brake when it first became apparent that Jacob would not move, i.e., after Jacob failed to heed the initial horn blast before the crossing."