As you may know from your time working on the railroad, the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) exists to protect you in the case of an unfortunate accident or job-related injury. Specifically, this Act grants you the legal right to sue your employer for the negligence that caused this to be. Well, proving their negligence is a process that may be made much simpler thanks to the concept of negligence per se. Without further ado, please read on to discover how negligence per se may apply to your claim and how one of the seasoned FELA lawyers at Hildebrand McLeod & Nelson LLP can help you establish your legal argument effectively.
What is the relevance of negligence per se in a FELA claim?
By legal definition, negligence per se means an employer’s negligence is automatically presumed when they break a federal safety law or regulation, particularly one designed to protect railroad workers. So, if this applies to your FELA claim, you may only need to prove that a law was violated, and that this violation subsequently prompted your accident or injury event.
This is one less extra step than if you had to use the traditional negligence standard, in which you would have to establish that your employer acted carelessly and unreasonably failed to identify a potentially hazardous condition on the railroad. From here, the only factor left to worry about is calculating the total damages you wish to seek recovery for (i.e., medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc).
Giving a more specific example, negligence per se may be relevant if your employer disobeyed a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) standard for equipment maintenance, like if you got hurt from an encounter with defective brakes. Or, if there was a Federal Safety Appliance Act (SSA) violation because couplers or handholds were installed in a noncompliant manner.
How does the comparative negligence rule apply to my FELA case?
While you may be confident in the fact that you can use the negligence per se statute to your advantage, you may be worried that your FELA case proceedings will reveal that you were partly to blame for your accident or injury event. Well, just know that, unlike workers’ compensation claims, your FELA claim may allow you to cite the comparative negligence statute, as well.
Rather than barring your claim altogether, comparative negligence allows you to still collect financial compensation for your incurred damages, just at an amount reduced by your percentage of fault. For instance, if the court finds you 25 percent liable, they may order your employer to pay for 75 percent of your claimed damages.
Rest assured, if you are also able to exercise the negligence per se statute, your employer’s violation of a federal safety law or regulation generally outweighs the importance that your own fault holds. Meaning, comparative negligence should hopefully not affect your final payout too much.
There is no need to wait any longer to hire one of the competent FELA lawyers if you are already ready to get on with your FELA case. Reach out to our law firm, Hildebrand McLeod & Nelson, LLP, at your earliest possible convenience.
