Jury Holds CSX Transportation 35% at Fault in Death of Midnight Rider Camera Assistant Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones was a 27-year-old camera assistant from Columbia, South Carolina. On February 20, 2014, she was on the first day of shooting Midnight Rider, a film about the musician Gregg Allman, when the crew went onto a CSX railroad trestle over the Altamaha River near Jesup, Georgia. A freight train came down the track while the crew was on the bridge. The crew had less than a minute to clear off. The train struck a metal bed that the filmmakers had placed across the rails for a scene, and debris from it sent Jones into the path of the train. She was killed, and six other crew members were hurt.

Her parents, Richard and Elizabeth Jones, sued the production company, its managers and the railroad. The director, Randall Miller, settled with the family in 2014, then pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass and served a year in jail. The other defendants except CSX also resolved their claims before trial. The Joneses were represented at trial by Jeffrey Harris of Harris Lowry Manton LLP, the lead trial attorney, with Jake Moore of Columbia, South Carolina, advising as co-counsel.

The case against CSX turned on what the railroad knew and did in the hour before the crash. Jurors in Savannah heard that two CSX trains had passed the crew, which stood on both sides of the track, in the hour before the collision, and that neither crew called dispatchers to report trespassers, although company policy told operators to report them right away. Harris also pointed out that the brakes were not applied until after the locomotive hit the bed. Three of Jones's co-workers testified that production managers never told the rest of the crew they were trespassing. CSX had twice emailed the production to deny permission to film on the bridge. The railroad argued that breaking its own policies did not prove negligence, and that the engineer held off braking out of concern that the train would derail and spill its containers onto the people on the narrow walkway. Its lawyers put the blame on the filmmakers.

The jury returned its verdict on July 17, 2017. It valued Jones's life and her pain and suffering at $11.2 million: just under $2 million for pain and suffering and $9.2 million for the economic loss from her death. Jurors then apportioned fault among the parties, including those who had settled, and put 35% on CSX, the largest single share, which came to about $3.92 million. Jones herself was assigned no fault. After the verdict her parents said the trial showed 'a number of exceptionally poor judgements and ignored opportunities' by CSX to prevent the death.

CSX moved for a new trial. Judge Gregory V. Sapp denied the motion in an order entered April 20, 2018, writing that the court disagreed with the argument that there was no evidence CSX violated the applicable standard of care and that the share of fault given to CSX was 'not so shocking or unsupported' as to warrant a retrial. CSX appealed. On January 25, 2019, a satisfaction of judgment was filed in Savannah, and the family's lawyers announced a confidential settlement that ended the appeal.