In case you haven’t read about it, there was a tragic death of a young woman who was hit by an Amtrak train on Sunday. As far as we can tell she did nothing wrong and the standard warning signals did not work, allegedly from train error. This is according to witnesses who saw it happen or were almost hit by the train themselves. Her whole life was in front of her and now it’s gone.
Now we didn’t know Ms. Lunn, but it sounds like she was a great woman and had a great future. It also sounds like she had no fault in this accident.
So if you are against wrongful death lawsuits as “jackpot justice”, imagine if this was your child or spouse or sibling or parent. What would that loss mean to you? I know it can’t bring her back, but the big point of a wrongful death lawsuit in Illinois is to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
I don’t know what this case is worth, but I hope the family is compensated to the point that Amtrak and other train companies will do whatever it takes to make sure that a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again.
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Tags: Amtrak, Katie Lunn
It seems to me any case would be with the maintainers of the gates and warning signals which did not, allegedly, function properly. I do not know which freight railroad that would be, but whichever one is the host is the one that would be called to answer for the malfunction and the resulting consequences. Amtrak operates their trains over others’ tracks in most of the country, and cannot be held responsible for the the shortcomings of the host railroad’s maintenance and procedures.