Man killed by train can be sued for bystander's injuries

Ruling in what it called a "tragically bizarre" case, an appeals court found that a man killed by a train while crossing the tracks at a Metra station can be held responsible after a part of his body sent airborne by the collision struck and injured a bystander. In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho, 18, was hurrying in the pouring rain with an umbrella over his head, trying to catch an inbound Metra train at the Edgebrook station in Chicago that was due to arrive in about five minutes when he was struck by a southbound Amtrak train travelling at more than 70 mph.

Several witnesses said he was smiling at them as the train hit him. A large portion of his body was thrown about 100 feet onto the southbound platform, where it struck Gayane Zokhrabov, then 58, who was waiting to catch the 8:17 a.m. train to work. She was knocked to the ground, her leg and wrist broken and her shoulder injured.



A Cook County judge dismissed Zokhrabov's lawsuit against Joho's estate, finding that Joho could not have anticipated Zokhrabov's injuries. A state appeals court, after noting that the case law involving "flying bodies" is sparse, has disagreed, ruling that "it was reasonably foreseeable" that the high-speed train would kill Joho and fling his body down the tracks toward a platform where people were waiting.

Leslie Rosen, who handled Zokhrabov's appeal, said while the circumstances of the case were "very peculiar and gory and creepy," it ultimately was a straightforward negligence case, no different than if a train passenger had been injured after the engineer hit the brakes. "If you do something as stupid as this guy did you have to be responsible for what comes from it," she said.