Train Accident Lawyers | Our Experience
For decades, Baum Hedlund has successfully represented railroad and train accident victims in some of the worst train crashes and derailments in our history. The firm’s train accident attorneys have handled the litigation for more than 85 passengers in train-related personal injury or wrongful death cases across the United States.
Why Baum Hedlund is the Right Choice for Your Train Accident Case:
- More than $1.9 billion recovered firm wide
- Extensive high-level experience
- Handling train accidents since 1987
- We find out what really happened
- Voted “Best Lawyers® Best Law Firms” by our clients and peers
- Successfully resolved over 85 train crash or derailment cases
- Major honors and national recognition for our achievements
- Appointed to Plaintiffs’ Steering Committees for Metrolink Glendale and Chatsworth
- Handled cases involving Amtrak, Union Pacific, CSX, Metrolink, WMATA and MARC
- We are safety advocates, advancing safety in order to prevent future tragedy
- Our attorney/mechanical engineer testified about rail passenger car crashworthiness at the Metrolink Glendale crash safety hearing conducted by the California State Assembly
- Lobbying with Metrolink Glendale clients in Sacramento to stop the practice of pushing passenger trains rather than the safer mode of pulling them
Timothy A. Loranger, Mass disaster attorney
Train accident victims or their families hire our firm because of our extensive high-level experience handling train accident litigation and other forms of commercial transportation liability. Baum Hedlund concentrates its practice on wrongful death and serious personal injury commercial transportation cases throughout the United States. The firm is listed in The Best Lawyers in America®, Top Ranked Law Firms™, U.S. News & World Report Best Lawyers® Best Law Firms and in Martindale Hubbell’s Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.
I have worked in law firms myself, including one of the largest in the nation. Quite simply, there is no finer representation available anywhere. I would recommend them to anyone in need of legal assistance wholeheartedly.
John Freel – Read more from our clients
Latest Train Accident News
Baum Hedlund Attorney Paul J. Hedlund and Clients Testify Before State Government on Train Safety.
Another Baum Hedlund senior partner, Paul J. Hedlund, who is also a mechanical engineer, testified about passenger car crashworthiness and the dangers of pushing passenger trains at the state hearing conducted by the California State Assembly, looking into the causes of the Glendale Metrolink train tragedy.
It is our law firm’s opinion that this “pushing” of passenger cars is likely responsible for the deaths and injuries which resulted from the southbound Metrolink train’s collision with the Jeep left on the tracks. As deranged as the action of parking a vehicle on the railroad tracks was, Metrolink’s unsafe procedure led to the tragic consequences in this case.
The firm handled its first train disaster in 1987. This was the case of the Amtrak – Conrail train collision in Chase, Maryland on January 4, 1987. In that incident, an Amtrak train, carrying 600 people, on its way to Boston from Washington, D.C., crashed into a set of Conrail freight locomotives bound for Pennsylvania. At the time of the collision it was reported the Amtrak train was traveling at an estimated speed of 108 mph. Train cars were stacked three high from the force of the impact.
The collision caused the deaths of 16 people, including the Amtrak engineer, and 175 people were also injured, making it, at that time, Amtrak’s deadliest wreck in its history.
The crash remained Amtrak’s worst until September 22, 1993, when 47 passengers and crew died when Amtrak’s Sunset Limited plunged off a bridge into a muddy bayou near Saraland, Alabama. Baum Hedlund represented 22 victims from this train derailment which was initiated by the mishandling of a barge that struck the bridge just before the wreck.
Maryland was again, the site of a fatal Amtrak crash on February 16, 1996, when 12 people were killed when one of the company’s passenger trains, the Capitol Limited, smashed into a MARC Maryland Rail Commuter train in Silver Spring. Baum Hedlund represented six families in the MARC train crash that also involved a locomotive engine pushing the passenger cars ahead of it.
January 4, 1987
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), following the MARC train crash and a New Jersey Transit train crash in Secaucus on February 9, 1996 (which was operating with the cab control car forward and the locomotive pushing), issued Emergency Order No. 20 in 1996 which discussed the “significantly higher risk of serious injury” of pushed versus pulled trains.
If you were injured or a loved one was killed in a train crash or derailment, please contact train accident attorneys with extensive experience handling train accidents in Los Angeles and across the nation.