Haukereid Ex Rel. Estate of Haukereid v. National Railroad Passenger Corp.

816 F.3d 527, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 4299, 2016 WL 877955
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedMarch 8, 2016
Docket14-3752
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 816 F.3d 527 (Haukereid Ex Rel. Estate of Haukereid v. National Railroad Passenger Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Haukereid Ex Rel. Estate of Haukereid v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 816 F.3d 527, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 4299, 2016 WL 877955 (8th Cir. 2016).

Opinions

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

Scott Haukereid brought this action on behalf of himself and his father’s estate, alleging that the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) negligently caused the wrongful death of his father Andrew Haukereid because the moving train from which he fell had-inadequate safety features and. instructions for the crew. The district court1 granted summary judgment to Amtrak, and Haukereid appeals. We affirm.

I.

Andrew Haukereid boarded one of Amtrak’s Superliner II trains on May 19, 2012 in San Antonio, Texas destined for Chicago, Illinois to visit his sons. He was 79 years old and without any diagnosed mental, cognitive, or psychiatric conditions.

A Superliner II train car has two manual side exit doors which are adjacent to the restrooms, and each exit door has a window in its top half. The interior of each exit door is marked with a sign warning passengers. not to open the door or window. To open a side exit door on this train, a person must: (1) lift a safety latch in the upper right corner of the door to an upright position; (2) push down the door handle; and (3) pull the door inward. The door windows are also secured by a latch. To open a window, an individual must lift [530]*530the. latch and pull the. window inward. The windows and side doors serve as emergency - exits and are left unlocked even while the train is moving.

While the train was underway Andrew spoke on the phone several times with his son Scott and occasionally asked crew members where the train was. At 8:39 pm Andrew called Scott and said he was on an Amtrak train bound for Chicago. About three hours later, he asked assistant conductor Louis Porch where the train was then. • Around 8:55 pm, a few minutes after the. crew had announced that the train had arrived in Texarkana, Andrew asked Porch if the train was near Chicago. Porch told him that it was still a long way to Chicago. Crew member Singrid Jackson reported that when she had.-escorted a man fitting Andrew’s description from the dining car to the coach section, she observed that he had a confused look as if he did not know where he was.

At 10:17 pm Scott called Andrew again, and Andrew told him that he did not think the train went to Chicago. Scott asked him to confirm the tram’s destination and call him back. Andrew then walked to the dining car where Porch and conductor John Davis were seated and told them, “I don’t know where I am:” Davis and Porch replied that the train was in Hope, Arkansas and asked Andrew where he was'headed. When Andrew hesitated to answer, Davis checked his ticket and told him that he had plenty of time for a good nap before they reached Chicago. At 10:33 pm Andrew called Scott and told him that he had spoken with an Amtrak employee arid confirmed the train was on its why to Chicago.' When the train arrived in Little Rock,' Arkansas at 12:13 am on May 20, Andrew asked Porch “is this Chicago?” The conductor responded that they were still twelve hours away from there.

The last person who saw Andrew alive was a fellow passenger, Bobbie Thomas. She testified that she noticed Andrew in the vestibule of his coach car sometime between 2:30 and 3:00 am on May 20, the date he disappeared. According to Thomas, Andrew was facing the right side door and the window, on the left exit door was open behind him. As Thomas went in and out of the restroom, she had to walk around Andrew who did not acknowledge her. She described his behavior to be “odd,” as if “his mind was someplace else, not there with him.” Andrew never did arrive in Chicago. His body was found several weeks later about 20 feet east of the railroad tracks in Clay County, Arkansas. No one witnessed him leave the train or observed that the train doors were not properly functioning. Nor did any crew member find any doors or windows open or unsecured.

Since Amtrak was established on May 1, 1971, at least 76 passengers have exited moving trains between stops. Of these -76 incidents, at least 29 of the missing passengers appeared to have been confused or disoriented. One of Haukereid’s experts, George A. Gavalla, opined that if Amtrak had informed its employees about the number' of accidents involving elderly passengers falling from its trains and distributed information to its crew members on how to recognize signs of cognitive impairment, Amtrak could have prevented Andrew from falling to his death. Gavalla also testified that it is more probable than not that Andrew’s accident would have been prevented had Amtrak installed door status indicators to alert crew and passengers whenever a dangerous exit door was opened, or had Amtrak installed an interlocking system on its Superliner passenger cars to prevent exit doors from being opened while a train was moving.

[531]*531While Andrew was still missing, Amtrak completed a missing person investigation. Amtra'k employees spoke with his. family members and noted in a preliminary investigation report-that his family had been “worried about him since he suffer[ed] from possible dementia although he had not been medically diagnosed.” Nevertheless, Andrew’s sons-and siblings testified that he had not had any cognitive or mental impairments. His sons reported that they were unaware of any prior instances of their father getting lost or becoming disoriented. Andrew’s domestic companion Carole Moreno told an Amtrak detective that he was starting to become forgetful although he’ was generally alert and lucid. She feared Andrew was developing memory loss and possible dementia. Amtrak employees who completed a company police department missing person report for the incident listed Andrew’s “reason for leaving the train” as “Possible Dementia.”

During its investigation Amtrak also interviewed its employees. On May 24 conductor Davis reported that because Andrew had repeatedly asked where he was, Davis had the impression that “[something just wasn’t quite right with [Andrew].” Several days later, Davis modir fied his statement to explain that he had not interacted with Andrew long enough to know if there was anything wrong with him. According to a neurological examination of Andrew on May 17, 2011, no mental, cognitive, or psychiatric problem was found.. Less than a month before Andrew boarded the train, an urgent care doctor who examined Andrew for jaw pain on April 20, 2012 had observed similarly that Andrew’s judgment and mood appeared normal and that he had been “oriented to time, place and person.”

On April 2, 2013 Scott Haukereid brought this action against Amtrak, alleging that it had negligently caused his father’s death. The district court concluded that although-a,reasonable jury could find that Amtrak breached its duty “by. not passing along information between crews about [Andrew^] confusion, not being more vigilant about his-circumstances, and not providing more training to crew members about the exit dangers faced by older travelers, especially at night,” a jury would have had to speculate as to how Andrew exited the train and as to the proximate cause of his death. The district court granted summary judgment for Amtrak, and Haukereid appeals.

H.

We review a “district court’s grant of summary judgment de novq, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoying party and giving that party the benefit of all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from the record,” Minn. ex rel. N. Pac. Ctr., Inc. v. BNSF Ry. Co., 686 F.3d 567, 571 (8th Cir.2012).

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Bluebook (online)
816 F.3d 527, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 4299, 2016 WL 877955, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/haukereid-ex-rel-estate-of-haukereid-v-national-railroad-passenger-corp-ca8-2016.