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According to the Texas Supreme Court, a Harris County judge should not have taken the Union Pacific railroad to trial over the death of a motorist in 1994. The $5.1 million verdict issued against the company was reversed when the justices unanimously agreed that reflective tape on a railroad crossing counts as a warning device.
The motorist, Billy Limmer, drove his pickup across railroad tracks as a Union Pacific train was approaching. He died instantly in the resulting crash, and his family sued claiming that Union Pacific failed to provide warning devices and failed to clear the view.
Union Pacific argued that they taped reflective strips onto the rail crossing using federal funds under a safety program enacted by the Texas legislature five years earlier, which counted as a warning device.
One of the Texas Supreme Court justices agreed, calling reflective strips “traffic control devices” under federal regulations and adding that the railroad was under no obligation to clear the pile of gravel that the suit claimed blocked the view of the oncoming train.
The justice also noted that fatalities at railroad crossings dropped 56 percent from 1980 to 2004, so it was clear that the safety program was working.
