NJT Conductor Awarded $700K

This is a newspaper article, and doesn't answer all questions, but here it is, for what it's worth.
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Wow, seems like a serious breakdown in communications. Why punish someone though, for taking off after witnessing something like that? Makes no sense...

Article mentioned that the crew was to blame for the accident as they were not protecting the workers as the should have. That's the reason for the punishment. That doesn't hold too much water given the court results.

Ordinarily a flagman's job is to warn workers when a train is about to show up. It's not his job to tell the workers which wires are hot. There were also a couple of electric traction guys there whose job was to tell the contractor which wires were hot, and which wires to work on. At least that is my impression. The article doesn't say what rules the conductor violated that got him the year off. If an electric train goes from a live section to a dead one, it livens up the dead one. i'm wondering if the conductor was supposed to keep electric trains clear of the out of service track. it's the job of the operator or dispatcher, who ever is controlling signals and switches there, to keep electric trains and engines clear of de-energized tracks. There are supposed to be grounds on the de-energized wires to keep them that way in case of accident. I wonder who the conductor reported illegal activity to, in order to gain "whistle blower" status. The company can't have tried to cover up the fatality.
Of course I feel sympathy for the man who was electrocuted.

It's not a mystery, it's there in the article, his absence as a result of the incident had to reported to the FRA.

DestinationUnknown wrote:It's not a mystery, it's there in the article, his absence as a result of the incident had to reported to the FRA.

That may be the real reason, but it's not grounds for discipline. The company contends that he got the time off for violating rules that led to the accident. What rules?

That's kind of the point of the lawsuit.

Without going into detail the supervisor had it in for this conductor over the years and basically made the wrong call in his zeal to nail the guy. The incident was very disturbing to the eyewitnesses as the victim was juiced more than once and it was not possible to save/revive him. A lot of safety rules were broken by the non RR parties which led up the incident unfolding the way it did including disobeying the flagman's direct order and a language barrier between him and the deceased. Some employees in all crafts and management think they are immune to discipline and feel they can do as they please. The out of court settlement points out NJT did not want to face a jury trial as they most likely would have lost the case.

kilroy wrote:Article mentioned that the crew was to blame for the accident as they were not protecting the workers as the should have. That's the reason for the punishment. That doesn't hold too much water given the court results.

The flagman provided the proper protections that he was supposed to. Conductor flagman does not have authority over catenary. Don't believe everything you read.