No matter how nice the transit people are, their attorneys will blame you
at trial for living if you bring a case against them.  Rachel Barton lives
in my neighborhood and now must use a wheelchair occasionally thanks to
Metra.  Her doctors say that she will need to rely on it more and more as
the years progress.

kelly





   VIOLIN, BARTON TO BLAME, METRA ARGUES
   By Judy Peres
   Tribune Staff Writer
   February 4, 1999

   Violin virtuoso Rachel Barton had "every opportunity" to avert the
   freak train accident that severed one of her legs and mangled the
   other, but she chose not to let go of the precious violin whose strap
   was caught in the train door, Metra lawyers charged Wednesday.

   "A woman who was not caught in a door elected for whatever reason to
   not take that strap off (and release) a half-million-dollar violin,"
   said attorney C. Barry Montgomery. "We cannot be responsible if
   somebody doesn't protect himself because he wants to save a violin, or
   a briefcase, or an umbrella."

   Barton, then 20, was injured on Jan. 16, 1995, as she got off a
   commuter train at the Elm Street station in Winnetka. She fell under
   the wheels of the train after being dragged more than 350 feet along
   the platform by the strap of the violin case, which was still on her
   shoulder. The violin was caught inside the train.

   Barton, seeking unspecified damages, is suing the train operators for
   negligence in a trial that got under way Wednesday in Cook County
   Circuit Court. Both sides completed opening statements.

   Montgomery, representing Metra and the former Chicago & North Western
   Railway, squared off against Robert Clifford, Barton's attorney, who
   said the railroad -- not Barton -- was at fault in the accident.

   In an opening statement that ran more than the 90 minutes allotted by
   Judge Allen Freeman, Clifford accused Metra and C&NW of operating in a
   "culture of indifference." In the five years preceding Barton's
   accident, Clifford said, there were 12 "near misses" involving
   passengers who got caught in train doors.

   "There were warning signs created by prior incidents," he said. "Good
   citizens (who had narrowly escaped serious injury) came forward to
   alert C&NW of the hazards" -- but nothing was done.

   "Rachel Barton's injuries were an event waiting to occur," Clifford
   said.

   The opening statements focused largely on technical questions about
   how train doors work.

   Clifford accused C&NW, which has since been bought by Union Pacific
   Railroad, of failing to use proper procedures to ensure that no one
   was getting on or off the train before giving the engineer the signal
   to start moving.

   He said Metra, which had contracted with C&NW to operate three of its
   12 commuter lines, has a "second-look rule." Under that procedure,
   conductors first stand on the platform to make sure everyone is safely
   on and off the train. Then, "whoever's assigned to the door gives a
   signal, and all the doors close but his," Clifford said. That person
   looks out onto the platform once again. When he's double-checked that
   it's clear, he closes his own door and signals to the engineer with a
   bell or buzzer that it's safe to release the brake.

   North Western trains had no second-look rule, Clifford charged.
   Instead, they employed a door-light system in which an electrical
   circuit is completed when all the train doors are closed. That circuit
   sends a green light to the engineer's panel.

   Because of the rubber edges on the doors, the strap on Barton's violin
   case did not interfere with the door-light system.

   Clifford's suggestion to the five-man, seven-woman jury was that the
   second-look rule is safer than the door-light system -- and that C&NW
   was negligent in failing to adopt it.

   Responding to that accusation in his own opening statement, Montgomery
   contended the door-light system -- introduced by C&NW in the 1950s --
   was an improvement on the second-look system that had been in effect
   earlier. Commuter trains can use 11 cars plus an engine at peak hours,
   making them as much as one-sixth of a mile long. "A single person
   leaning out the window" can't see that far, Montgomery said,
   especially if there's fog or if the track is curved.

   Noting that no federal or state regulations require any specific
   door-operating system, Montgomery said Barton plans to call an
   "expert" who will testify that Metra's second-look system is
   foolproof. "If that were true," he said, "then every railroad would
   use second-look, no one would use door lights and there would be no
   accidents."

   As for the 12 incidents to which Clifford alluded, Montgomery said,
   most involved latecomers and none was serious enough to convince North
   Western officials they had a safety problem. No one was dragged by a
   train, he said; everyone was able to extricate himself; no one was
   seriously injured -- in fact, most were not injured at all.

   "Put it in context," he urged the jurors. "Over the five preceding
   years there were 12 incidents. In that period, on the three North
   Western lines, there were approximately 225 million opportunities to
   get caught in train doors."

   Montgomery, who during his statement used a full-scale model of a set
   of train doors, insisted that C&NW's procedures "meet the standard of
   care" and that they were followed during the time Barton was trying to
   get off the train.

   Both sides agreed that Barton was reading and correcting papers as she
   rode the No. 317 train that day from Ravenswood to Winnetka, where she
   worked as a teacher at the Music Center of the North Shore, now the
   Music Institute of Chicago.

   "But you have to know when it's time to stop reading," Montgomery
   said, "when it's time to get ready to leave the train -- especially
   when you have four bags."

   Clifford acknowledged Barton was carrying a purse, a briefcase with a
   four-inch sheaf of papers and a large red lunch bag in addition to the
   padded case containing her violin -- a 17th Century Amati. All four
   were slung over her left shoulder as she tried to alight from the
   train.

   A Winnetka police officer who arrived on the scene testified Wednesday
   the red lunch bag was found on the train platform near where Barton
   was lying on the track, 366 feet north of where she got off the train.
   Surrounding her mangled body were papers that had fallen out of the
   briefcase.

   Clifford said Barton's severed left leg had to be amputated above the
   knee, and her right leg and foot were badly hurt. Hinting at the
   damages caused by the accident, he said the medical bills already
   total more than $650,000, she will need a knee replacement in the
   future and could have fertility problems as well.

   It will be harder to put a price tag on some of the less tangible
   effects of the accident, he hinted, including a promising professional
   career as a concert violinist that at the very least was put on hold
   for a couple of years.

   The trial, which resumes Thursday, is expected to last about three
   weeks.

Photo caption:
 Rachel Barton (right) and attorney Pam Menaker arrive in
    court Wednesday for the start of Barton's negligence lawsuit against
   Metra. The violinist was seriously injured when she was dragged under
               a train in 1995. (Tribune photo by Phil Greer)


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