$21.8 Million FELA Verdict for Railroad Worker's Estate in Diesel-Exhaust Cancer Death
Won by Napoli Shkolnik.
A Virginia jury awarded $21.8 million to the family of Randall Redford, a maintenance-of-way worker who died of Acute Myeloid Leukemia after 38 years of diesel-exhaust exposure on Norfolk Southern's tracks, with Napoli Shkolnik attorney Chris Schnieders securing the verdict under FELA.
What happened
Randall Redford spent 38 years as a maintenance-of-way worker for Norfolk Southern Railway, a job that kept him in close contact with diesel exhaust day after day. In 2019, he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a blood cancer linked to prolonged exposure to diesel fumes. He underwent chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant in 2020, achieving a remission that held for several years. The cancer returned in 2024, and Redford died shortly after.
His wife, Angela Redford, brought a wrongful-death action against the railroad on behalf of his estate under the Federal Employers Liability Act, which governs injury and death claims by railroad workers. The case was filed in Virginia state court under case number CL22011540 and tried before Judge Terry I. Adelman.
Chris Schnieders of Napoli Shkolnik, based in Overland Park, Kansas, tried the case for the plaintiff. At trial, a central issue was that Norfolk Southern had trained workers on respirator use but never actually supplied them with respirators when they were working around diesel exhaust. The railroad's defense rested almost entirely on Redford's 40-year smoking history of one to two packs per day, arguing it, not the job, caused the cancer.
The jury rejected that all-or-nothing argument. On October 9, 2025, jurors found Norfolk Southern 48 percent at fault for Redford's death. They awarded $10 million for pain and suffering, $10 million for mental anguish, and $1.8 million for medical bills, reaching a gross verdict of $21.8 million. The jury attributed the remaining 52 percent of comparative fault to Redford based on his smoking. No post-trial reduction or appeal has been reported as of the date of publication.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Napoli Shkolnik
All Napoli Shkolnik proven verdicts →As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.
As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik represented Nassau County in negotiations that produced a $1.1 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the three largest prescription drug distributors in the United States.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.