Jury: Railroad to pay $3.9M for train death of film worker

SAVANNAH, GA. » A railroad owner plans to appeal a jury’s decision that it must pay $3.9 million to the family of a movie worker killed on a Georgia railroad trestle in 2014, a spokesman for the company said.

The jury in Savannah decided in a civil verdict Monday that CSX Transportation shared in the blame for the deadly freight train collision even though the film crew was trespassing.

The parents of Sarah Jones sued CSX in Chatham County State Court, saying the railroad shared blame for their daughter’s death. The 27-year-old camera assistant died in the crash Feb. 20, 2014, during the first day of shooting “Midnight Rider,” an ill-fated movie about Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band.

“This trial disclosed a number of exceptionally poor judgments and ignored opportunities by CSX Transportation to prevent this tragedy,” Jones’ parents, Richard and Elizabeth Jones of Columbia, South Carolina, said in a written statement.

A spokesman for the Jacksonville, Florida-based company, Rob Doolittle, said CSX plans to appeal the jury’s decision.

“CSX is deeply sympathetic to the terrible loss suffered by the family of Ms. Sarah Jones, but respectfully disagrees with the conclusions reached by the jury today,” Doolittle said.

The film’s director, Randall Miller, served a year in jail after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing charges. Jones’ parents said CSX also failed to take precautions that could have averted the crash on a trestle spanning the Altamaha River near Jesup in southeast Georgia.

Jones’ family also had sued Miller, his fellow production managers and several other defendants. All of them except for CSX settled or otherwise resolved their cases out of court. The jury Monday found $11.2 million to be the total value of Jones’ life as well as her pain and suffering. Jurors decided CSX — the only defendant on trial — bore 35 percent of the responsibility for Jones’ death, making the railroad’s share $3.9 million.

The jury in Savannah heard testimony during the civil trial that two CSX trains rolled through while the movie crew stood on both sides of the tracks within an hour before the crash, but the operators of those trains never called dispatchers to alert them. Jurors also were shown a CSX policy that train operators are expected to immediately report trespassers on its tracks and rights of way.