Political Quotes

“I was on the defense side. I was defending a railroad in a lawsuit brought by the survivors of an elderly man who was killed at a railroad crossing in November of 1970 near Springfield, IL. There was a row of cars, train cars, parked near this crossing. This elderly man, late at night, crept up on the crossing to see if he could get across. His car stalled in the crossing. He tried to get out, couldn't, and the train came through and killed him. When the jury in Illinois sat down and looked at it, they said if you measure the value of an elderly man's life, there is not a lot of compensation. But when they looked at the railroad I was defending and found out we had done the same thing time and time and time again, they decided this railroad needed to receive a message. So they imposed a punitive damage verdict of over $600,000 on the railroad I represented, to send a message to this railroad to stop parking these train cars so close to a crossing that people could get injured and killed.”