Baum Hedlund's Train Accident Litigation Experience

For two decades now Baum Hedlund has been representing railroad and train accident victims in some of the worst train disasters in our history. The firm’s train accident attorneys have handled the litigation for more than 60 passengers in train-related personal injury or wrongful death cases across the United States.

Many train accident victims or their families hire our firm because of our many years of experience handling train accident litigation and other forms of commercial transportation liability. Baum Hedlund concentrates its practice on wrongful death and serious personal injury cases throughout the United States. The firm is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers and maintains the *AV® peer review rating, obtained through a rigorous process conducted by the leading international lawyers’ directory, Martindale Hubbell.

One of Baum Hedlund’s senior partners, J. Clark Aristei, was appointed Plaintiffs’ Liaison Counsel for the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee overseeing the one hundred or more consolidated cases for one of the deadliest train derailments in the last decade, the Glendale Metrolink derailment which occurred in Glendale, California on January 26, 2005. A Metrolink train being pushed, rather than pulled by a locomotive, derailed after it hit a Jeep Cherokee that was parked on the tracks. Baum Hedlund represents 15 passengers, including three of the 11 fatalities, from this tragedy.

Mr. Aristei also serves as a member of Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee for the wrongful death and personal injury cases consolidated as a result of the September 12, 2008 Chatsworth, California Metrolink rail disaster.  The firm represents the families of seven passengers who were either killed or injured in that train wreck.

Another Baum Hedlund senior partner, Paul J. Hedlund, who is also a mechanical engineer, testified about passenger car crashworthiness and the dangers of pushing passenger trains at the state hearing conducted by the California State Assembly, looking into the causes of the Metrolink train tragedy.  

It is our law firm’s opinion that this “pushing” of passenger cars is likely responsible for the deaths and injuries which resulted from the southbound Metrolink train’s collision with the Jeep left on the tracks.  As deranged as the action of parking a vehicle on the railroad tracks was, Metrolink’s unsafe procedure led to the tragic consequences in this case. 

The firm handled its first train disaster twenty years ago.  This was the case of the Amtrak - Conrail train collision in Chase, Maryland on January 4, 1987. In that incident, an Amtrak train, carrying 600 people, on its way to Boston from Washington, D.C., crashed into a set of Conrail freight locomotives bound for Pennsylvania.  At the time of the collision it was reported the Amtrak train was traveling at an estimated speed of 108 mph. Train cars were stacked three high from the force of the impact.

The collision caused the deaths of 16 people, including the Amtrak engineer, and 175 people were also injured, making it, at that time, Amtrak’s deadliest wreck in its history.

The crash remained Amtrak's worst until September 22, 1993, when 47 passengers and crew died when Amtrak’s Sunset Limited plunged off a bridge into a muddy bayou near Saraland, Alabama. Baum Hedlund represented 22 victims from this train derailment which was initiated by the mishandling of a barge that struck the bridge just before the wreck.

Maryland was again, the site of a fatal Amtrak crash on February 16, 1996, when 12 people were killed when one of the company's passenger trains, the Capitol Limited, smashed into a MARC Maryland Rail Commuter train in Silver Spring. Baum Hedlund represented six families in the MARC train crash that also involved a locomotive engine pushing the passenger cars ahead of it.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), following the MARC train crash and a New Jersey Transit train crash in Secaucus on February 9, 1996 (which was operating with the cab control car forward and the locomotive pushing), issued Emergency Order No. 20 in 1996 which discussed the “significantly higher risk of serious injury” of pushed versus pulled trains.

*AV® Rating Explanation: Martindale-Hubbell is the facilitator of a peer review rating process. Ratings reflect the confidential opinions of members of the Bar and the Judiciary. Martindale-Hubbell Ratings fall into two categories - legal ability and general ethical standards. "CV, BV and AV are registered certification marks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies." "An AV® rating reflects an attorney who has reached the heights of professional excellence. He or she has usually practiced law for many years, and is recognized for the highest levels of skill and integrity."