PORTLAND, Ore. - Attorneys for a nine-year-old boy have filed suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court seeking nearly $6 million in damages from Union Pacific and two railroad employees after a train ran over the boy's foot last year, causing him to lose four toes, the Oregonian reports.
According to the complaint, Dominick Branch of North Portland was playing along railroad tracks near his home in the New Columbia neighborhood on June 25, 2008, when a train passed. The train's locomotive or one of its cars ran over Branch's left foot.
Specific details of the incident were unavailable, but according to the suit, Branch was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors performed skin grafts, fused two of his toes together and, eventually, were forced to amputate four toes, including the big toe.
The suit alleges that an engineer and a conductor, identified as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, were negligent in traveling too fast, not keeping a proper lookout, failing to blow their whistle, failing to stop and obtain prompt medical attention for the boy after running over his foot and failing to be aware of the presence of small children playing near the tracks.
It further alleges that Union Pacific was negligent in not putting up warning signs or a fence around the railroad tracks, an area the suit characterizes as "frequented by pedestrians."
Branch's injury occurred at the point where the railroad tracks head through a V-shaped gulch then south into a tunnel under New Columbia. Children can often be seen playing in a grassy area above the gulch and in the vicinity of a Boys & Girls Club of New Columbia, a community center and a Rosa Parks Eementary Shool.
Union Pacific did not respond to several requests for comment. One of Branch's attorneys declined to comment on the case. Nancy MacDonald, Branch's mother and guardian in the case, could not be reached.
On Thursday, a line of auto tire tracks ran from a snow-covered community garden toward a ridge above the railroad tunnel. A steep path, slippery with mud from recent snow and rain, lined the slope from the ridge of the gulch down to the tracks.
Two "Private Property: No Trespassing" signs, one on a short fence topping the tunnel, the other on a pole near the bottom of the path, were obscured with red and blue graffiti and nearly illegible. A discarded tricycle lay in weeds near the tracks and children could be heard playing in a nearby house.
Branch and his attorneys seek $200,000 for medical damages, $250,000 for future medical damages, and $5.5 million for suffering caused by disfigurement, disability, emotional distress, frustration, anxiety and loss of enjoyment of life.
(This item appeared Jan. 4, 2010, in the Oregonian.)
Little fucker should be charged with trespassing and his parents charged with criminal neglect. Doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize the tracks are not a fucking play ground.
