Graham Personal Injury Law Blog

On a sunny day in North Carolina, traffic was stopped on a busy highway. Department of Transportation workers were making repairs to a nearby bridge. As the workers went about their duties, the lull in traffic likely had a lulling effect on the drivers. The last vehicle in the line of cars was a large commercial truck. Unbeknownst to the stopped motorists on the scene, another semi truck was quickly approaching.

The second truck slammed into the back of the first one, causing immense damage to both vehicles. Gasoline, transmission fluid and other liquids spilled onto the roadway, risking fire.

Two men lost their lives in a motorcycle crash that took place at the Charlotte Motor Speedway last weekend. Both men were involved in an all-day event for Vietnam veterans.

According to a report from North Carolina police, the 66-year-old driver of a Harley Davidson was riding on the premises with his wife after the event. The two were traveling about 50 miles per hour when the motorcycle they were driving collided with a 71-year-old who was riding his motorcycle. Both men involved in the collision suffered fatal injuries.

Last month we discussed the possibility that Chapel Hill would become the first town in the nation to ban both handheld and hands-free cell phone use while driving. Now that possibility has become a reality. Starting June 1, it will be illegal to simultaneously drive and talk on a cell phone in Chapel Hill.

In March the town council heard tearful pleas from the family members of fatal accident victims. Grieving members of the community asked the council to help prevent auto accidents by banning non-emergency cell phone use for drivers. Still, a 4-4 vote deadlocked the council, requiring a second reading.

Whoa on the title.  Sounds like Harry Potter with trains flying through the air.  The sentence is not constructed perfectly and probably needs a comma after train.  However it does get your attention to imagine a train flying through the air.  Sort of like  Steve Brodie in The Wreck of the Old 97 when it left the trestle on it's infamous trip from either Lynchburg,Va or Danville Va. to Spencer N.C.  What I meant was an article about bodies of persons which are sent flying through the air after being hit by a train.

Well, some time ago I promised you the name of the case in North Carolina in which the N.C. Supremes let a railroad off the hook because the engineer could not reasonably anticipate that a body hit by his train would fly through the air and hurt another pedestrian in the vicinity.  Actually the body was a living person when it was hit by the train, became a body, and then flew through the air to cause injury.  Among other findings, the court said that the engineer could not reasonably anticipate that his negligence in not slowing down would cause this exact type of injury.  The case is Boone v. North Carolina Railway Co. and it can be found at 240 N.C. 152, 8l S.E. 2d  380 from 1954.  It does not take a genius to see that exactly what might happen if you go through a pedestrian area negligently could be thousands of injurious results and that requiring the engineer to anticipate each of them creates a insurmountable burden for an injured party.  Later, after the insurance defense lawyer types were removed from the Supreme Court over time, it became sufficient to show that "some type" of injurious result could flow from negligence.  Plaintiffs no longer had to show the exact type of injury would probably result.  If you fly a defective airplane at an air show and it falls into a crowd, you don't have to show that the pilot should have anticipated that a person would scream into a phone and cause a person on the other end of the cellphone connection to collapse or die from the resulting emotional distress of listening to his or here spouse die from the airplane crash.

  But whatever goes around comes around, as they say.  In Illinois recently, the same sort of bizarre thing happened with a different result.  The case name was not included on Google but apparently the injured party was Gayane Zobrakhov who sued the estate of Hiroyuyki Joho for injuries.. Joho was 18 and was hurrying to catch a passenger train walking in a bad rainstorm with his umbrella pulled down around his head.  He failed to see another train which was approaching.  That train hit him and killed him sending his body flying through the air in pieces.  One piece hit Zobrakhovf and broke a leg.  The estate of Joho was allowed to be sued for negligence in waling near a train station with an umbrella pulled down sufficiently to block his senses.  "He could have anticipated" that in doing so, he could be hit and sent through the air.  Apparently it is much easier to show that a defendant, dead or alive, could anticipate that his or her actions could cause harm to another.  Just wanted to comply with my earlier promise in this blog to give you the name of the Kannapolis train station case and report this new case which iseerily close to the fact situation from 1954.  Good luck and thanks for reading our blog.  Contact us with inquiries or if assistance is needed with these areas of the law regarding personal injury or criminal cases. Clay