Caltrain to pay $1 million to family of boy killed by train
By Mike Rosenberg
San Mateo County Times
Posted: 09/03/2010 08:03:29 PM PDT
Updated: 09/04/2010 08:33:52 AM PDT
Caltrain will spend nearly $1 million as part of a settlement with the family of a 15-year-old South San Francisco boy hit and killed by a train while riding his skateboard in 2008, officials said.
The settlement stems from a wrongful-death lawsuit the family of Anthony Rea filed in May 2009 in San Mateo County Superior Court, and later moved to federal court, against Caltrain and Amtrak, whose engineers operate the trains.
Rea was struck and killed by a southbound Caltrain while crossing the tracks at the San Bruno station, where he had just exited a northbound train, in April 2008. The agency and witnesses said at the time the El Camino High School freshman rode his skateboard around a lowered crossing arm and was listening to headphones when he was hit.
Although the exact settlement is still being worked out, federal court documents show the two sides reached an agreement during a mediation hearing Aug. 13 pending the Caltrain board of directors' approval.
Caltrain's board, in a closed session hearing Thursday, authorized its attorneys to reach a settlement and add $990,000 to its budget "to cover a portion of the expenses related to the settlement," according to a statement released by the agency.
It's also unclear how much of the amount would go to the family, attorneys fees or other court costs, as Caltrain declined further comment until the case is over.
Nevertheless, it is another financial blow to an agency that
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is warning it could descend into commute-time only service by the end of 2011 to deal with its budget woes.
Agency officials said the payment would come out of a reserve fund that has dwindled to about $5 million, which officials said was already a "ridiculously low" number for an agency with nearly a $100 million budget.
The account is meant for emergencies such as last year's horn noise problems and the 2008 cracked bolster problem that required fixes to several train cars.
Attorneys at a San Francisco-based law firm representing parents Cecilia and Dean Rea also said they could not comment until after the settlement was final.
In the lawsuit, the attorneys said the agency "encouraged and allowed" pedestrians to enter the track in the area where Rea was hit.
It also blamed the engineer for failing to "slow or stop the train and failing to control the train so as to avoid hitting" Rea.
Caltrain on Friday did not make available the transit police report, citing the ongoing case.
This...just pisses me off to no end. There had better be some news that is being left out of this, because it seemed like the kid was being a fucking dumbass. Too add insult to injury, Caltrain is in financial dire straits, and there are probably going to be some cutbacks this fall-and I rely on many of those off peak hour trips that they are thinking of cutting.
Moments like this I *almost* feel like becoming a right wing tort reform warrior.
Based on that report it sounds like a horrendous result. However, from my experience of the UK media, cases are very often inaccurately reported by the media and if you read the actual case, the logic behind the result becomes much clearer. The fact that the rail company was willing to settle for such a large figure suggests something else was going on.
True, which is why I'm desperately hoping there's more to this story than meets the eye. As a frequent Caltrain rider, I get pretty anal about safety, and honestly my tolerance for dumbasses around railroads is very strained.
When I was in high school, a consortium of train companies sent some speakers to warn us that trains are heavy, have a long stopping distance, and can't swerve off the rails to avoid hitting someone. I thought they were going to an awful lot of effort to belabor the obvious, but apparently some people think trains are a lot more maneuverable than they really are.
It also blamed the engineer for failing to "slow or stop the train and failing to control the train so as to avoid hitting" Rea.
And according to the Train Safety PSA folks, most every time someone gets hit by a train, a bunch of ignoramuses get outraged and want to know why the train didn't swerve or stop instantly. Sometimes these guys even track down the traumatized engineer who was driving the train and make harassing phone calls.
Personally I liked the Jeremy Clarkson level crossing safety video for getting the message across. Running a locomotive into a car at 80mph while filming it with high speed cameras really gets the message across.
Oh my. that does make it clear, with all of the usual TopGear style.
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
You hear about one or two of these every year in Britain, to the point where there's occasional talk of eliminating level crossings completely.
But to be honest, it's not the number of people who kill themselves taking stupid risks on level crossings that bothers me; it might be a thoroughly shitty experience for the driver, but stupid people dying as a result of their own stupidity is cause for celebration to my mind.
But as the Upton Nervet and Selby crashes demonstrate, it's not just the driver who's endangered by these stunts.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
