Lincoln Jury Awards BNSF Carman $3.48 Million After Havelock Yard Crush Injury and Leg Amputation
After trial: The jury's $7,112,071 verdict was reduced by the plaintiff's 51 percent share of fault under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, leaving $3,484,914.79. No appeal was reported.
Won by Chod Law, LLC.
Jimmy Rohr Jr., a BNSF carman, was injured in February 2014 at the Havelock Yard in Lincoln when a railcar wheel rolled over his left foot, leading to 13 surgeries and a below-knee amputation. After a trial in January 2019, a Lancaster County jury valued his damages at $7,112,071 under the Federal Employers' Liability Act and assigned him 51 percent of the fault. After that reduction he was left with about $3,485,000, or 49 percent of the verdict.
What happened
On February 22, 2014, Jimmy Rohr Jr., a BNSF Railway carman based in Lincoln, Nebraska, was working at the railroad's Havelock Yard. His job that day was to sort empty cars from a coal train that needed repairs. He was setting the handbrake on the end car of a string of nine when five more cars rolled into them, and a car wheel rolled over his left foot during the flat-switching move.
The foot suffered open fractures and severe crush injuries. Over the following months Rohr went through 13 surgeries. Surgeons first performed a mid-foot amputation, and after medical complications they amputated his left leg below the knee. The recovery took more than a year of treatment and rehabilitation. He returned to work as a carman for BNSF in October 2015, about twenty months after the accident, and was still working in that job in Lincoln after the verdict.
Rohr sued BNSF under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, the federal statute that lets injured railroad workers seek damages from their employer. The case, Rohr v. BNSF Railway Co., No. CI-17-620, was tried in the District Court of Lancaster County in Lincoln. The Lincoln Journal Star reported that Jeff Chod was one of two Denver attorneys who represented him; the second attorney was not named in the coverage we reviewed.
The trial ran from January 7 to January 16, 2019, and fault was the central question. The jury did not treat Rohr as the only cause: it found BNSF 49 percent responsible, which under FELA is enough to make the railroad liable for the injury. It valued his damages at $7,112,071 and assigned the remaining 51 percent of the fault to Rohr himself.
FELA does not bar a worker whose own negligence contributed to an injury. It reduces the award by his share of the fault. The judgment was therefore cut to 49 percent of the verdict, or $3,484,914.79, which the Journal Star rounded to $3,485,000.
No appeal was reported. We found no Nebraska appellate opinion in the case, and the post-trial record was not available to us, so we cannot say whether the net amount was paid in full.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Lincoln Journal Star, 'Jury returns multimillion-dollar verdict in favor of railroad worker injured at Havelock Yard', Jan. 2019·Archived copy
- 2.Kearney Hub (Associated Press), 'Jury awards injured railroad worker nearly $3.5M', Jan. 2019·Archived copy
- 3.BLET, 'Jury returns multimillion-dollar verdict in favor of BNSF worker hurt at Havelock Yard', Jan. 2019·Archived copy
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